At the turn of the millennium, Abercrombie & Fitch was on top of the world.
The clothing brand might've been over a century old by that time, but thanks to a top-down
restructuring, the company became a full-on sensation for teens and young adults.
As the new documentary "White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch" details, however,
this rebrand was controversial right from the start.
Eventually, many of those inherent issues caught up to the company, resulting in a series
of massive public relations issues.
"You know whenever something like this happens, I always imagine in my mind a scenario where
somebody, like, man if they just had one person who was like, 'Maybe this is not a good idea?'
Here's a look at some of the most surprising things we learned while watching "White Hot:
The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch."
As the film details, one of the most successful strategies that Abercrombie & Fitch had during
its heyday was marketing screen-printed T-shirts with different images and phrases sprinkled
in with the brand's title.
However, amid the slapdash effort to keep churning out all of these new catchy designs
for the T-shirts, there were some releases that proved to be shockingly offensive.
"Let's talk about the Two Wongs shirt.
That shirt, that's one of the tees that I remember."
That shirt featured a stereotypical depiction of two Asian cartoon figures with conical
hats for a faux laundry advertisement that included the phrase, "Two wongs make a white."
That design ignited such a maelstrom of public outrage and protests that, ultimately, the
unsold shirts had to be physically destroyed by burning.
"We thought that Asians would love these shirts.
That's from a press release from Abercrombie."
The insensitivity issues associated with Abercrombie & Fitch's legacy in the early 2000s were hardly
limited to one terrible shirt, though.
The sense of exclusion was part of the very formula of the company, particularly when
it came to its hiring and firing practices.
According to one of the film's insider testimonials, under the leadership of then-CEO Mike Jeffries,
store managers were expected to file rankings of their employees as part of a weekly review
process.
"You have to rank all your employees on a scale of like, cool to rocks.
And if they aren't at least cool then you have to zero them out off the schedule."
The scale wasn't based on productivity, efficiency, or another measure that might be commonplace
in overseeing an employee's contributions to a company.
It was all about physical looks.
"All that mattered was that the employees that you took pictures of and sent back to
headquarters were hot.
Clearly this is illegal?
Right?"
Another issue that permeated Abercrombie & Fitch during its days of teen fashion domination
was the lack of diversity.
As the documentary explains, these exclusionary practices resulted in several lawsuits, one
of which made it all the way to the Supreme Court.
One such plaintiff was an ex-employee named Carla, who got a part-time job at the Valley
Plaza Mall in Bakersfield, California, when she was 19.
Carla reported being relegated to closing shift details like window-washing and not
being allowed to swap shifts with her co-workers upon request.
"So I'm complaining back to my girlfriend, 'you know, 'I can't believe this.
What is going on?'
She told me, ‘I bet they're not scheduling you because you're Black.
Like no other Black people work there.'
Eventually, Carla found that she was taken off the store's schedule entirely, with her
effectively being fired without a word.
"And I remember asking him, 'What should I do?
Do I still work here?
I haven't been on the schedule in two months.'
And he's like, 'No, no, you do.
Just keep calling us.'
I knew I had been fired and I just moved on."
Carla went on to join a class-action lawsuit in 2003 alongside others who alleged discrimination,
and the case was settled the following year.
As shocking as her experience and the aftermath was, though, that wasn't even the end of Abercrombie
& Fitch's problematic policies.
"Then we would get in trouble and, 'Don't do that again, but do something just like
it,' you know?"
Be sure to check out "White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch" for more jaw-dropping
details.
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