White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch

[Deleted]

Has anyone else watched this? 

I have never watched anything that simultaneously had me so irate and also wanting to yell "duh" at the screen. 


This is my favorite line "At some point, those kids that learned that it wasn't cool to be bullied grew up and decided they didn't want to spend money at a place that made them feel bad."

[Cappy]

Not yet, but on my list. I was a store manager in 2001-2002 right after college. A&F was VERY problematic and I have heaps of stories but I thankfully did not directly see many of the things that are coming out now. After I quit I reached out and interviewed w/ the lawyers for the the class action lawsuit.

[Deleted]

Apr 20, 2022 13:19:11 GMT -5 Cappy said:

Not yet, but on my list. I was a store manager in 2001-2002 right after college. A&F was VERY problematic and I have heaps of stories but I thankfully did not directly see many of the things that are coming out now. After I quit I reached out and interviewed w/ the lawyers for the the class action lawsuit.

Wow. I think you will definitely want to check it out. They get into the lawsuit and talk to some of the people that were part of it.

[1confused1]

It’s on my list, hoping to watch it this weekend!

[foundmylazybum]

I started to watch it last night but fell asleep a little bit after the class action law suit.

I had a friend who worked as a manager at Hollister, and it seemed nuts. A lot of the stuff they talked about was absolutely true. Scheduling, how people moved up in the company/brand, the way they had to set up stores and the "lifestyle" they were promoting. It was a lot. Like A LOT. And right below this image, there was so much shady stuff happening. She went to that campus a few times..what a cult.

Whenever I look at AF now, I definitely see that the vibe was homoerotic and had a masculine homosexual gaze that really did not really care very much about women..but that definitely didn't come across to my teenage mind/POV.


I think its incredibly messed up that the company had such a clear idea of what "all American" looked like and they were so open about that look being exclusive and excluding a distinct group of..all American people. That is so gross.

[Deleted]

I’ve watched about half, I’ll watch the rest tonight. I was already in college when A&F became huge, and I can vividly remember going into stores and being immediately turned off by the loud music and exclusive-ness of the place. I wasn’t particularly big then (maybe a size 8-10 at that point) and their biggest size was too small on me. It was very clear that their brand was “not for me.”

[al dente]

Oh I can't wait to watch this. I worked at Hollister in high school and even at that age I was very WTF about things. It's the only job I didn't give a two week notice when I quit and my manager made a threat of how I could never work there again since I wasn't giving two weeks. I was all "oh... Ya that's fine" lol.

[noodleoo]

As a woman of color, it was *very* apparent that this store was not for me. I remember walking into one at the mall, taking one quick glance around the store, and turning around and immediately walking out.

[msmerymac]

I knew this douche who worked there who would wax for hours about how it was a "magalog" not a catalog. In fact, I have a lot of stories about that dude, none of them flattering.

[sent]

The first and only time I bought anything there was in the summer of 2000. I went to their store in downtown Cambridge, MA and thought I had finally made it when I bought my brother a button down shirt with my summer internship paycheck. He was barely in high school then and in my head I was the cool older sister helping him have a leg up in the high school hierarchy when it came to clothes. I even mailed the box home and everything.

One day recently, I saw my dad wearing the same shirt around the house. 😂

I will watch this when I’m home. This stuff fascinates me.

[shortstax]

Interesting, I'll have to watch.

One of my former colleagues (who's a PhD and expert in his discipline) has "AF Store Model" on his resume and LinkedIn profile still. I'm a little like, "dude, let it go."

I have a friend who's a consultant and was on assignment at the A&F HQ for a while. I was hoping for some dirt, but she was all "totally normal, HQ is just like other companies..." which is not what I'd heard back in 2003-2005 when I was job searching nearby.

[katfco]

I never had either the money or the body for stores like that (still don't), and everything I hear about what they expected of their staff is awful.

[fernweh]

I didn’t have the money or the body type to shop there when I was young. All I have to add is that my (male) cousin worked there in college and whenever we would see him at Christmas he would talk an obnoxious amount about how they only hired the pretty people and you had to be soooo good looking to work there. This continued long after he no longer worked there.

[SusanBAnthony]

Apr 20, 2022 16:48:12 GMT -5 shortstax said:

Interesting, I'll have to watch.

One of my former colleagues (who's a PhD and expert in his discipline) has "AF Store Model" on his resume and LinkedIn profile still. I'm a little like, "dude, let it go."

I have a friend who's a consultant and was on assignment at the A&F HQ for a while. I was hoping for some dirt, but she was all "totally normal, HQ is just like other companies..." which is not what I'd heard back in 2003-2005 when I was job searching nearby.

I knew a man who was an A&F corporate accountant around 2014. He was totally normal. One time I asked him if he was worried about/horrified by something the CEO was in the news for at the time, and he hadn't even heard of it. He just did his accounting thing.

I can't imagine not knowing when my CEO was in the news but apparently your friend isn't the only one.

[Jalapeñomel]

I was told by a male shopper? employee? that I was too fat to shop at AF. Never went in one again.

He wasn’t wrong (because anyone over a size 6 was “too fat”), but ouch that stung.

[foundmylazybum]

I also knew someone who worked there and they were running a complex theft ring that was based on fake returns. They were brought up on felony level charges they stole so much merchandise. But they were able to be one of the "models" up front! Which is what mattered to the company!

[basilosaurus]

Apr 20, 2022 15:21:50 GMT -5 @villainv said:

I’ve watched about half, I’ll watch the rest tonight. I was already in college when A&F became huge, and I can vividly remember going into stores and being immediately turned off by the loud music and exclusive-ness of the place. I wasn’t particularly big then (maybe a size 8-10 at that point) and their biggest size was too small on me. It was very clear that their brand was “not for me.”

Yes, the store made me not want to return. I bought an overpriced polo shirt in college that actually was one of my favorites for many years, so money well spent (it was super soft, held up extremely well), but I only went back once and didn't purchase because at my size 0 or even 00 of the time I wasn't going to be wearing that shit. I already find shopping miserably obnoxious, so why make it more so with the noise?!

[Patsy Baloney]

As a lifelong fat person, I feel like even this documentary is not for me 😂

[eddy]

I loved the first 10 minutes. Total nostalgia as they set up what “the times” were like.

Anyways I grew up in a rural area. Even our big city malls didn’t have the store until I was in college? I do remember it being very cool in high school. If someone showed up with some birks and a A&F shirt………whew they clearly got to go to the Twin Cities to shop lol. It made it even more sought after and exclusive.

[meli554]

I bought myself a sweater from there when I was in college and thought I was so cool. That was a big purchase for me. Then I brought laundry home one weekend and my dad put it in the dryer and shrunk it. I do remember hearing rumors (truths) about some of their practices back then.

[icedcoffee]

I had one jacket from A&F in high school. It was a large and I was a size 2-4. LOL

I want to watch this. Sounds interesting. Is it Netflix?

[cattledogkisses]

I remember the popular thing to do when I was in high school was bring your clothes for gym class in either an A&F or Victorias Secret shopping bag. It was definitely a status symbol back then.

[wildrice]

I remember how popular A&F was in high school. I never could afford to shop there though. I think I may have bought a pair of jeans there when I was in college? I was never skinny but I may have been like a size 10 at the time. I never owned anything else from there.

We were just talking about this at work a couple of weeks ago during a discussion about racism. My (Black) coworker was telling us about how she was hired basically as a token diversity hire and had the kind of crappy experiences you can imagine stemming from that. She's in her 20's so this must have been within the last decade. I don't think any of us in that conversation were aware that this documentary was coming out, so funny timing.

[wanderingback]

Somewhat off topic, but posts like these remind me that I have such a bad memory!

Like how do people remember the one shirt they had or the year they bought a shirt or first time they stepped in a certain store?! I have no recollection of any of those things!

Anyway, I started watching the documentary and yep not too surprising.

[wawa]

The only surprises to me about this topic is that it took them so long to be sued.
When I worked at the mall in high school (99-00) everybody knew that AF only hired skinny, pretty white kids. We joked about it in our store (I worked at the GAP) that we were the place you could get a job even if you were painfully average. Unlike there. it wasn't exactly a secret.

[sakoro]

Apr 21, 2022 8:11:03 GMT -5 wanderingback said:

Somewhat off topic, but posts like these remind me that I have such a bad memory!

Like how do people remember the one shirt they had or the year they bought a shirt or first time they stepped in a certain store?! I have no recollection of any of those things!

I don’t remember 99% of my clothing purchases so it’s probably not your memory bring bad. Because money was so tight for much of my teens/ 20s I remember those occasions when I was finally able to shop at the cool, trendy store. I think I bought one shirt from A&F circa 2001 when I was already out of college. I still remember the nasty cologne smell and the obnoxious bro who rang up my purchase!

[breezy8407]

Apr 21, 2022 6:31:48 GMT -5 eddy said:

I loved the first 10 minutes. Total nostalgia as they set up what “the times” were like.

Anyways I grew up in a rural area. Even our big city malls didn’t have the store until I was in college? I do remember it being very cool in high school. If someone showed up with some birks and a A&F shirt………whew they clearly got to go to the Twin Cities to shop lol. It made it even more sought after and exclusive.

LOL. Yes. I remember going on our annual before school shopping trip to the Mall of America and then I started getting their catalogues, so I would order things that way. 

My friend worked there in college and we also had the giant posters covering the walls of our apartment. She had SO many clothes and we were able to share sizes, and then she would give me her discards. I loved it at the time. 

I haven't watched it yet, but its on my list for sure. I was too young/naïve to realize how problematic they were (and lets be honest Hollister wasn't that different!), but I cringe a little at myself with how much of that clothing I had. 

[StrawberryBlondie]

Apr 21, 2022 6:31:48 GMT -5 eddy said:

I loved the first 10 minutes. Total nostalgia as they set up what “the times” were like.

Anyways I grew up in a rural area. Even our big city malls didn’t have the store until I was in college? I do remember it being very cool in high school. If someone showed up with some birks and a A&F shirt………whew they clearly got to go to the Twin Cities to shop lol. It made it even more sought after and exclusive.

Yes, exactly this. Word for word.

[Cappy]

Re: Hiring. I don't know if it is touched on in the documentary or not (I'll watch this weekend and circle back) but everyone assumes hiring practice was just based on good looks when the corporate metric was linked to something crazy called "target school". Each store was assigned a local college (or, for Hollister, a high school) and we had targets to meet for hires. 75% of my hires were supposed to be from the target college and I got dinged if they weren't. By doing things this way, A&F was hitching themselves to the exclusionary gatekeeping provided by the university's own admissions process (SES/race/etc.). I have no idea whether it was intentional or not but it would not surprise me at all if that was intentional.

The idea pushed from home office was that if you hired all these students from a specific college then they'd have to buy the clothes for work and wear them on campus. They'd then start to influence the culture of the campus as "brand reps". I guess kind of like early day Instagram influencers.

These brand reps could only work if they were "current", meaning their clothes were sold on a current "floor set" and not on clearance. There were rules on how many layers you had to wear. Just a t-shirt wasn't allowed. It had to be at least 2 layered shirts. As soon as something went on sale you could no longer wear it. This all meant employees were required to keep buying more and more expensive clothes at only 20% 30% discount to have the chance to work. They required us to hire hundreds of people but then only gave us the labor to schedule a few brand reps 5-10 hours/week. I always felt like the clothing and target school strategy gave off major MLM vibes because all of these employees were a secondary target market for sales.

[imimahoney]

Watched it last night and had the same thoughts as you.

That guy with the sideways hat seemed like such a douche. When he said "Jeffries was chasing his youth" I thought for sure the film crew was punking the guy.