White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch

[bronxgirl]

I was in college when the A &F popularity first exploded in the early 90s. I always looked around the store when I was at the mall, but I always thought the clothes were so ugly. I remember seeing my sorority sisters wearing outfits that looked cute and they said that’s where they bought them, but whenever I went into the store the clothes looked so ugly and boring.

[fumbalina]

I never even considered entering the store because of the cologne. I figured they didn't carry anything in my size anyway, since the only mall store that ever did was Lane Bryant. I have always been a big and tall girl. My brother loved Gap, but even he didn't show any interest in this store. I also never saw a customer walk in.

[wanderingback]

Cappy, yep that is talked about in the documentary.

Then, when they settled the lawsuit and had to make some minor changes and had to have a diversity office they started targeting HBCUs, lol. A hot mess.

[missva]

I have not even thought about A&F since college until a few weeks ago when I ordered some of their clothes. They have really cute stuff now :/ Their jeans were coveted in college and I had several friends that went to work for their corporate office after college. I definitely want to check out the documentary!

[kadams767]

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!

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

For me, it's exactly what another poster said.  We didn't have money growing up, and my parents would never pay A&F prices - or any of the $$$ trendy stores' prices, frankly.  So I used to scour the clearance racks for the cheapest stuff so I that could still fit in with everyone else.  It was a fine line, trying to find stuff that didn't scream "I bought this on clearance!" but still also screamed "I shop at Abercrombie too!".  Even if it was like, a tank top for $10, it was a big deal for my teenaged self.  So yea, I'm 40, and I can't remember to pick up coffee beans on my way home from work, but I can remember with exact specificity the handful of items I owned from A&F in high school.    

[kadams767]

Apr 21, 2022 9:06:49 GMT -5 Cappy said:

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% 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.

Do you remember what the employee discount was there?  I worked for all 3 of the Gap brands in HS/College and, at least at Banana, they had a seasonal "requirement" (it was not really strictly enforced), but their employee discount was, IMO, pretty generous, so it wasn't super onerous to stay current enough to make it through your shifts.  You could get away with buying a handful of items each season pretty easily.  Obviously it was the least prestigious of the brands, but I was still relieved when I worked at Old Navy and we had staff t-shirts and just had to wear jeans with them and that was it.

[purplepenguin7]

Apr 21, 2022 9:06:49 GMT -5 Cappy said:

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% 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.

A friend of mine was told she had take off her belt because it wasn't from the current season.  I also knew a few other people who worked there and were sent home on occasion due to not wearing the "right" outfit to work.  I worked in retail (express) at the time and the Express vs. A&F culture was worlds apart.  I remember we just had to wear "express like" clothes at one point. 

[wawa]

Apr 21, 2022 10:44:15 GMT -5 kadams767 said:

Apr 21, 2022 9:06:49 GMT -5 Cappy said:

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% 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.

Do you remember what the employee discount was there?  I worked for all 3 of the Gap brands in HS/College and, at least at Banana, they had a seasonal "requirement" (it was not really strictly enforced), but their employee discount was, IMO, pretty generous, so it wasn't super onerous to stay current enough to make it through your shifts.  You could get away with buying a handful of items each season pretty easily.  Obviously it was the least prestigious of the brands, but I was still relieved when I worked at Old Navy and we had staff t-shirts and just had to wear jeans with them and that was it.

yeah, my years at the GAP we got 50% off....6?...full priced items per....some time period (month? quarter?), and then a blanket 20 or 30% off everything else (I forget exact details obvs).  The 50%'s were so we'd wear current items, and I typically used mine to buy jeans, and a few sweaters in the winter. Nobody ever gave me a hard time for wearing marked down items, but I also tended really hard toward super simple basics (which the gap sold a lot of) that were pretty timeless.  Like, my gray t-shirt and denim jacket never cycled out, so...it didn't matter. 

But even with all that, there were pay periods where I bought more in clothes than I made in pay as a part time high school kid.
I can't imagine being expected to buy AF stuff, on a constant cycle of in-season only, with only a 20% discount and actually making money at the end of the day.  The tinge of MLM is strong.

[foundmylazybum]

Apr 21, 2022 9:06:49 GMT -5 Cappy said:

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% 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.

Yes this is discussed in the documentary.

My friend that was a manager at Hollister had so many clothes from there bc of this policy. Everything from jeans to tops to underwear, just piles of basically brand new clothes. It is incredibly wasteful and it took away from her paycheck.

The other girl I knew had every jacket in every color, every tee shirt etc. That practice I'm sure contributed to the theft in some ways.

[kadams767]

Apr 21, 2022 11:04:23 GMT -5 wawa said:

Apr 21, 2022 10:44:15 GMT -5 kadams767 said:

Do you remember what the employee discount was there?  I worked for all 3 of the Gap brands in HS/College and, at least at Banana, they had a seasonal "requirement" (it was not really strictly enforced), but their employee discount was, IMO, pretty generous, so it wasn't super onerous to stay current enough to make it through your shifts.  You could get away with buying a handful of items each season pretty easily.  Obviously it was the least prestigious of the brands, but I was still relieved when I worked at Old Navy and we had staff t-shirts and just had to wear jeans with them and that was it.

yeah, my years at the GAP we got 50% off....6?...full priced items per....some time period (month? quarter?), and then a blanket 20 or 30% off everything else (I forget exact details obvs).  The 50%'s were so we'd wear current items, and I typically used mine to buy jeans, and a few sweaters in the winter. Nobody ever gave me a hard time for wearing marked down items, but I also tended really hard toward super simple basics (which the gap sold a lot of) that were pretty timeless.  Like, my gray t-shirt and denim jacket never cycled out, so...it didn't matter. 

But even with all that, there were pay periods where I bought more in clothes than I made in pay as a part time high school kid.
I can't imagine being expected to buy AF stuff, on a constant cycle of in-season only, with only a 20% discount and actually making money at the end of the day.  The tinge of MLM is strong.

That's basically what I did as well.  I spent a lot on clothes as well in HS, but that was also a big reason I needed to work - I needed to buy clothes, so it mostly worked out OK.  I definitely would have been pissed though if I was at a place like AF and was essentially required to buy a new full wardrobe every season just to work there.  I wasn't trying to feed a family on this income or anything, but I wasn't working for shits and giggles either.  I needed a paycheck of some sort.

[Cappy]

Apr 21, 2022 10:44:15 GMT -5 kadams767 said:

Apr 21, 2022 9:06:49 GMT -5 Cappy said:

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% 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.

Do you remember what the employee discount was there?  I worked for all 3 of the Gap brands in HS/College and, at least at Banana, they had a seasonal "requirement" (it was not really strictly enforced), but their employee discount was, IMO, pretty generous, so it wasn't super onerous to stay current enough to make it through your shifts.  You could get away with buying a handful of items each season pretty easily.  Obviously it was the least prestigious of the brands, but I was still relieved when I worked at Old Navy and we had staff t-shirts and just had to wear jeans with them and that was it.

I can't remember but if I had to try, I think brand reps got 30% off and managers got 40% off but for floor sets we were given the chance to buy 3 50% off items.  I am not a clothes person and only bought what I needed to get by for work and I was spending $500/month (making 24k/year and working 65-70 hour weeks living at home bc I couldn't afford rent). The stuff was so $$$$ that I remember struggling even with the discount. 

ETA: I think the 20% I originally remembered was from Hollister (I managed both stores).

[Cappy]

Apr 21, 2022 11:08:03 GMT -5 foundmylazybum said:

Apr 21, 2022 9:06:49 GMT -5 Cappy said:

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% 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.

Yes this is discussed in the documentary.

My friend that was a manager at Hollister had so many clothes from there bc of this policy. Everything from jeans to tops to underwear, just piles of basically brand new clothes. It is incredibly wasteful and it took away from her paycheck.

The other girl I knew had every jacket in every color, every tee shirt etc. That practice I'm sure contributed to the theft in some ways.

Theft was an issue. The common one was employees stealing "damaged out" returns. We were supposed to box them up and send them back if they had any sort of pin hole from a sensor or flaw. Brand reps would totally steal from that box in the store room because there was no inventory system. The other was I had brand reps who would take a sensor off something from the floor and have another brand rep process it as a return then cash out. I don't know exactly how it worked, just that I had to let people go who were caught doing that.  

[sent]

Apr 21, 2022 8:57:04 GMT -5 sakoro said:

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!

Yeah exactly when you grow up super sheltered with all the not cool stuff, you remember every detail each time you get to experience something your family would never purchase or allow. 

[gardengal]

I totally felt the journalist that said something like “wow, they totally bottled everything I hated about high school.”

[foundmylazybum]

The combination of low rise jeans plus baby tee shirts is such an uncomfortable trend in so many ways, I hope we never go back to. It really did fit a narrow market.

[abs]

Ohhhh retail. I never really shopped at A&F but worked at another retailer in college and for 10 years after.

Honestly had a pretty good experience but some of these issues exist everywhere. In 1998 we were still required to wear hose if we were wearing a dress. We had to look the brand and be in season. This meant wool and cashmere in September when it was still 100 outside because that is what we were selling. We got 6 items a month at 40% off.

By the time I graduated college (2000) and became a manager the hose requirement was gone. The discount became unlimited. There wasn’t any strictness on being in season and by 2007ish we could wear jeans if they were ours. Still had to look the brand and that became the bane of my existence. Like yes I can afford the clothes as a manager and it was a great perk but my college kids trying to pay for school and rent cannot! I am not making them buy it. I am hiring who is qualified and can’t only hire people that don’t need to work. They can look professional without spending hundreds of dollars a month on new clothes. Totally exhausting fighting that. Also it’s totally racist because guess who on my team was given the hardest time? I do miss it sometimes because we had an awesome team and had fun together but looking back on some of it…..woof.

[atexan]

Apr 21, 2022 11:08:03 GMT -5 foundmylazybum said:

Apr 21, 2022 9:06:49 GMT -5 Cappy said:

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% 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.

Yes this is discussed in the documentary.

My friend that was a manager at Hollister had so many clothes from there bc of this policy. Everything from jeans to tops to underwear, just piles of basically brand new clothes. It is incredibly wasteful and it took away from her paycheck.

The other girl I knew had every jacket in every color, every tee shirt etc. That practice I'm sure contributed to the theft in some ways.

It absolutely did.  My friend in college worked for them and everyone who worked the register stole massive quantities of shit from them because they didn't want to spend their whole check on work clothes and then it just turned into spite.  She gave me several things from there and when I was like stop spending your money on clothes for me she was like, oh I'm not.

[joy]

Cappy - my college was one of these target colleges. Many grads also went to work at “Abercrombie corporate” and were crazy proud. They influenced people from the next graduating class to work there, as well.

Seeing the rationale laid here makes it even more distasteful to me than it felt at the time.

[tamarindy]

I had to watch this last night because I know the male model from Nebraska; he worked at a bar with my brother and stayed at our house a few times, lol.

As a doc, it got a bit boring. I was too tall for most A&F stuff, but man do I wish I could get my money back for the few things I bought there now.

[kadams767]

Apr 21, 2022 12:48:07 GMT -5 joy said:

Cappy - my college was one of these target colleges. Many grads also went to work at “Abercrombie corporate” and were crazy proud. They influenced people from the next graduating class to work there, as well.

Seeing the rationale laid here makes it even more distasteful to me than it felt at the time.

I'm nervous some of these people didn't grow out of it.  An acquaintance of mine was a store manager and briefly worked at corporate after we graduated college, so 18 years ago at this point, and he STILL has it proudly listed on his LinkedIn and resume.  He is a complete d-bag, so it tracks, but...why?

[pugz]

ooh excited to watch it. I didn't shop there much in high school because even once I made my own money from my job at Hobby Lobby (lol I have storiiiiies), it was too rich for my blood and I was like a size 10/12 which was not convenient since everything ran small there. I don't think I ever bought anything that was a branded but I did buy this adorable pink cardigan that I wore a lot, and I think the sweater I wore in my senior pics was from AF. I shopped more at American Eagle or Gap. Those were the only 3 apparel stores in our town that weren't a department store and mall trips were rare.

[RoxMonster]

I watched this last night after reading this thread. I was definitely not the target audience of A&F in high school. I did buy maybe a couple tees from there? I know I had something from there. I bought their largest size and they were pretty skin tight on me. I didn't know the extent of the awful stuff happening there until the doc last night but not surprised from what I remembered of the brand.

I had a few retail jobs in college. My favorite brand as a college freshman/sophomore was AE and I was THRILLED to get to work there for the holiday season one year. And then I absolutely hated it. A lot of it was the manager, but overall I just hated the way they did scheduling, which was probably not unusual for a lot of retail places, but I would be listed as "on call" and then they'd say they didn't need me to come in but two hours later, say they got busy and needed me there ASAP. And several times I was sent home early because they overstaffed that day. I barely made any money working there because I was hardly scheduled. My next retail job was the LOFT for a summer and that one was decent. I'd only have maybe one on-call shift a week and usually they'd say don't come in but had 4-5 shifts besides that. There was a LOT of emphasis on how much we were selling each day and I am just not into sales lol. I know that is the whole point of retail, but it just emphasized sales is not for me. We weren't required to wear Loft clothes but just clothing in that style.

My favorite retail job though was Macy's and I worked there a couple years in college. We had to wear all black and it was super easy. I got a couple pairs of black dress pants, a few black shirts, and that was my outfit! Didn't even have to think about it. No on-call shifts, no emphasis on how much I sold, and I worked in the "misses" section, so I had a lot of lovely older women who would regularly come in and they were so nice. That was definitely more my speed than A&F!

[loira]

I am almost finished and it really made me regret buying any A&F stuff. I never knew about the "cool" factor because it wasn't a brand we had in Canada until well beyond my university years. I would travel to the US with my dad because he was often sent there for work, and while there I'd buy things at pretty much any store you couldn't find in Canada at the time (Old Navy, A&F, The Limited). I remember seeing an A&F store in a mall in London years later and that must have been after it turned into this techno cologne hell because nothing about it seemed appealing at that point.

[wise_rita]

Apr 21, 2022 8:58:26 GMT -5 breezy8407 said:

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. 
 

I got Old Navy YEARS before anybody in my podunk hometown had access, and I definitely thought I was the shit.

A (hot) friend of mine was offered a job at A&F in a store. She was an international student with no off-campus work rights. I wonder if they would've tried to do some shady deals had she expressed actual interest.

loira The Limited was the bomb! I will never not love that store and will not rest until it returns.

[hermione]

I watched this last night and...wow! I was too intimidated to shop there - it was very clear it was a store for pretty/thin people. I didn't consider myself either. Plus the I just generally found the inability to look through the windows to see what was inside off-putting.

In addition to the hiring/firing practices, the part in the documentary where they showed the racist graphic tees was really horrifying.

[majesty318]

Apr 21, 2022 10:37:31 GMT -5 kadams767 said:

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!

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

For me, it's exactly what another poster said.  We didn't have money growing up, and my parents would never pay A&F prices - or any of the $$$ trendy stores' prices, frankly.  So I used to scour the clearance racks for the cheapest stuff so I that could still fit in with everyone else.  It was a fine line, trying to find stuff that didn't scream "I bought this on clearance!" but still also screamed "I shop at Abercrombie too!".  Even if it was like, a tank top for $10, it was a big deal for my teenaged self.  So yea, I'm 40, and I can't remember to pick up coffee beans on my way home from work, but I can remember with exact specificity the handful of items I owned from A&F in high school.    

OMG yes to all of this. Except my opportunity to blast that "I can shop here too" came when I had a friend who worked there. I used her discount to buy a green plaid button down, a red henley, and a pair of jeans. Vividly remember these items cause I was so irrationally excited to finally be cool. I shudder at my college self! 

[carmenere]

Apr 21, 2022 8:57:04 GMT -5 sakoro said:

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!

Same. I remember walking by the store (OMG the smell) but not going in because I knew it was too expensive. My grandma gave me two A&F shirts for Christmas and I remember being so proud to finally have the same thing all the cool kids had, I wore those shirts like every week. I don't remember what they said but my mom was mortified by how inappropriate it was.

[madringal]

I was for sure more of a Gap girl in HS (Legit, my AOL screen name was GapGirl165, lol) and we didn't have A&F anywhere near me. But twice a year our youth group would make a trip to Indy and our first stop was ALWAYS A&F at Circle Center Mall. Coming back to small town, Indiana in my new A&F gear was a high like none other.

As an adult now, ugh, I can't even imagine wearing any of their clothes. But I will say their kids stuff has the best sizing for tall, slim kids. No one else has 9/10, 11/12, 13/14, 15/16. It all goes from 8 to 10/12, to 14/16. It's been a lifesaver for us. And shockingly, the clothes are pretty modest.

[twilightmv]

I shopped there in high school, so the influence must have been very very strong because the rest of my look was very hot topic/broadway t shirts. So I'd wear like fishnets and a plaid skirt one day, and then my Abercrombie rugby shirt and low rise jeans the next day. I look terrible in rugby shirts. I also remember their giant catalogues, and I have a vague memory of an interview with Nicky and Paris Hilton in it, where they said they'd rather be poor than fat but maybe I dreamed it.

DH worked there in HS. He claims he was nice to all shoppers. He wore their terrible cologne when we started dating and I was so happy when that bottle was empty. Blech.

[fernweh]

So I just watched it. Honestly it’s disgusting but I can’t say that I’m shocked about anything in there. I feel like it was pretty clear to me even as a teenager that they only hired/sold to certain types of people.

I don’t know about hiring practices but didn’t the CEO of Lululemon say something very similar in regards to there being certain types of people (ie fat) that they didn’t want wearing their clothes? Did that CEO get ousted?