Post by account_disabled on Feb 27, 2024 3:29:25 GMT -6
If you are a millennial or parent of one, you surely know the style of what was an iconic brand of that generation: Abercrombie & Fitch. And for years, ads featuring shirtless men, sculpted abs over low-cut jeans, and a mix of white, thin, and tanned bodies represented the identity of "moose" clothing.
However, success was paid for and not only because those teenagers became adults, but also because of a culture that did not know how to adapt to the demands and values of its clients, as shown in the new Netflix documentary, White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch .
A company from the past
Abercrombie & Fitch was "part of the landscape of what Chinese American Phone Number List I thought it meant to be a young person," the production's director, Alison Klayman, told The Guardian . The above applied to many American teenagers from the late 90s to the 2000s, as Abercrombie stores were located in most shopping centers in the United States.
Whenever you talk about branding, “you immediately move on to stories about people's identity formation,” Klayman says. The amount of money that could or could not be spent on clothes, the body insecurities, the traces of memories from trips to the mall.
the fall of abercrombie fitch documentary
The overwhelming smell of his cologne, Fierce, applied liberally to all surfaces. The messages one received about what was fashionable, about which bodies met the right standards and which didn't.
Resorting to memory, the documentary shows, through a succinct and extensive study, the evolution and sales tactics of the company, based on a vision of "preppy cool", which maintained those messages in a quite evident way.
The exclusionary sales strategy was in all corporate activities, even in 2006, former CEO Mike Jeffries , who oversaw the brand's precipitous rise, defined its market this way:
Let's go after the cool kids. We're going after the attractive American guy with a great attitude and lots of friends. Many people do not belong to our type of clothing, and cannot belong. Are we exclusive? Absolutely.
Mike Jeffries, former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch
And the company was "white" not only in a financial sense, during a period of cultural ubiquity at the turn of the millennium, but it promoted, internally and externally, a racist vision of beauty and style. This is told in White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch , using first-person interviews with former staff members and cultural scholars.
Discrimination: The fall of Abercrombie & Fitch
The brand that banned store staff from having dreadlocks in corporate materials, that classified employees based on their appearance and skin tone, faced a racial discrimination class-action lawsuit earlier in the decade. of 2000.
In 2015, Abercrombie & Fitch argued before the Supreme Court that it was legal to deny employment to a woman wearing a headscarf because the religious garment violated its "appearance policy." Evidently, the company lost in a ruling of 8-1.
To understand the implications of the company's management, the new Netflix production takes a more objective look at Abercrombie, offering the opportunity to examine the "abstract forces that affect us in life, things like beauty standards or structural racism." », and peek behind the curtain to see «exactly how this was a top-down system that was based on existing prejudices».
However, success was paid for and not only because those teenagers became adults, but also because of a culture that did not know how to adapt to the demands and values of its clients, as shown in the new Netflix documentary, White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch .
A company from the past
Abercrombie & Fitch was "part of the landscape of what Chinese American Phone Number List I thought it meant to be a young person," the production's director, Alison Klayman, told The Guardian . The above applied to many American teenagers from the late 90s to the 2000s, as Abercrombie stores were located in most shopping centers in the United States.
Whenever you talk about branding, “you immediately move on to stories about people's identity formation,” Klayman says. The amount of money that could or could not be spent on clothes, the body insecurities, the traces of memories from trips to the mall.
the fall of abercrombie fitch documentary
The overwhelming smell of his cologne, Fierce, applied liberally to all surfaces. The messages one received about what was fashionable, about which bodies met the right standards and which didn't.
Resorting to memory, the documentary shows, through a succinct and extensive study, the evolution and sales tactics of the company, based on a vision of "preppy cool", which maintained those messages in a quite evident way.
The exclusionary sales strategy was in all corporate activities, even in 2006, former CEO Mike Jeffries , who oversaw the brand's precipitous rise, defined its market this way:
Let's go after the cool kids. We're going after the attractive American guy with a great attitude and lots of friends. Many people do not belong to our type of clothing, and cannot belong. Are we exclusive? Absolutely.
Mike Jeffries, former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch
And the company was "white" not only in a financial sense, during a period of cultural ubiquity at the turn of the millennium, but it promoted, internally and externally, a racist vision of beauty and style. This is told in White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch , using first-person interviews with former staff members and cultural scholars.
Discrimination: The fall of Abercrombie & Fitch
The brand that banned store staff from having dreadlocks in corporate materials, that classified employees based on their appearance and skin tone, faced a racial discrimination class-action lawsuit earlier in the decade. of 2000.
In 2015, Abercrombie & Fitch argued before the Supreme Court that it was legal to deny employment to a woman wearing a headscarf because the religious garment violated its "appearance policy." Evidently, the company lost in a ruling of 8-1.
To understand the implications of the company's management, the new Netflix production takes a more objective look at Abercrombie, offering the opportunity to examine the "abstract forces that affect us in life, things like beauty standards or structural racism." », and peek behind the curtain to see «exactly how this was a top-down system that was based on existing prejudices».