Mike
Jeffries resigned as CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch on Dec. 9.
This is certainly good news, as Jeffries is notorious for
being an asshole of impressive magnitude. Under his leadership, Abercrombie
& Fitch was sued in 2003 for employment discrimination for racist and sexist
hiring practices; apparently, Jeffries
loved him some white dudes, and this was reflected in who was hired for his
stores and who got the best jobs once they were hired. (This is a polite way of
saying that women, black people, Hispanics, and Asians had a tough time getting
hired, and those that did often worked out-of-sight in the backroom.) The lawsuit
ended in
a settlement that included the company paying $40 million to discriminated
workers and a revision of its hiring and promotion practices.
Jeffries also earned a lot of ire over some well-publicized
remarks about who Abercrombie & Fitch’s target market is. From a 2006 interview with Salon:
“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,” he says. “Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either.”
I mean, in a way, the candor is laudable, but yikes.
In any case, Abercrombie & Fitch’s falling profits and
brand image had put Jeffries’s future with the company in jeopardy in recent
years, so while his resignation happened quickly, it wasn’t exactly unexpected. To be
fair, many
mall clothing retailers are suffering, thanks in part to the recession and teens
with lighter wallets and changing tastes.
But Abercrombie & Fitch—by far the priciest of what some1
call the Teen Mall Clothing Triple A, along with American Eagle and Aéropostale—was
probably the most doomed in the wake of the recession. Abercrombie & Fitch
appealed to kids who weren’t rich but wanted to appear rich; when the recession
hit, the faux rich kids couldn’t afford their clothes anymore and the real rich kids weren’t
buying their clothes from them in the first place. And once that became
evident, fewer and fewer people felt compelled to don the moose.
So let’s take a moment to dance on the professional grave of
Jeffries, a creepy dude with creepy fake blonde hair who appealed to the basest
parts of American vanity and consumerism and still found a way to fuck it up. I hope he enjoys his retirement
while he can, because once he passes, he will surely find himself damned to an
afterlife where I presume a bunch of larger folks wearing Faded Glory-brand
jean shorts and camo cargos will pelt him with copies of the September issue of
Farm & Tractor Fashion for all
eternity2.
* * *
In any case, Jeffries’s resignation reminded me of a small
little project I did with a friend several years ago. We sneaked into an
Abercrombie & Fitch and a Hollister at the mall and surreptitiously placed
little activist flyers into their clothing. I thought we were being sneaky,
until a customer asked us a question about a price, and we had to explain we
don’t actually work there (“Oh, I’m sorry, I just saw you guys handling the
clothes and I just assumed—my bad”).
Granted, the flyers don’t reflect my best writing or my best
thinking, and rereading them, they make me cringe a bit. But I still look at
them fondly, because I liked this version of myself that cared strongly about
things and devised weird and quirky plans to express my opinions. Let’s take a
look at a sampling of my efforts:
This one took an anti-consumerism and anti-advertising angle and, in particular, the inanity of paying a company money for the right to advertise on your body. It’s interesting that I picked $59 as the upper-limit for ridiculous prices to pay for a logo graphic T-shirt.
Here was a flyer that took a feminist tack, albeit with some sloppy, inelegant writing (if you’re going to sound cavalier about eating disorders, then your writing better be coruscating). I believe I was floating the theory that teen clothing retailers intentionally making clothing sizes inconsistent to mess with girls’ body image and sense of self-esteem, which is ultimately beneficial for Abercrombie & Fitch and other image-based retailers—a theory that, as far as I know, has no evidence behind it, but kind of plausible, right? Also, I’m not sure where I saw “Independent Grrl” booty shorts, but I think it’d be hilarious to own a pair.
So basically, at some point, I thought, “You know how to get the message out in a way that resonates with my generation? Get some John fuckin’ Keats up in this shit!” This is proof that, had I majored in English, I would’ve been the most obnoxious person ever. But still, the last line is the beginning of a burn that could’ve been decent with a bit more workshopping.
1By “some,” I mean “I.” But it is a handy way of looking at the teen
mall clothing retailer landscape, right? Aéropostale is the budget choice;
American Eagle is moderately priced and of moderate quality; and Abercrombie
& Fitch is the highest tier. (I don’t mean this as a dig, by the way. One of my favorite T-shirts is from Aéropostale—a gift from a family friend—despite my having
graduated middle school. But it's a really comfortable shirt and I love it so there.)
2That’s probably a little too mean.
