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Picture Supply: Getty / Michael M. Santiago
The 12 months was 2008.
And that 12 months for my 14-year-old self was characterised by a big shift in my wardrobe. It was the primary time I ever obtained a pair of Coach trainers to match my Coach crossbody, and in addition one of many final instances I might be carrying streetwear. In just some months, as a substitute of window purchasing for Coogi at Jimmy Jazz, we began touring half-hour out of town to buy Abercrombie & Fitch and its subsidiary, Hollister.
In April, Netflix launched a documentary entitled “White Scorching” chronicling rise and fall of Abercrombie & Fitch within the ’90s and 2000s, however whereas the documentary dissects Abercrombie & Fitch as a popular culture phenomenon in white suburbia, it would not showcase the best way Black youngsters in Black cities embraced the model. However Black folks have been, and proceed to be, instrumental in A&F’s success, from influencing purchases on social media to purchasing commonly themselves.
Search the names of comparable life-style manufacturers on Fb, and you will find previous profiles of Black youngsters with social handles like HollisterKidd. Throughout my highschool years, it wasn’t unusual to see Abercrombie & Fitch paired with True Faith denims and Cartier frames at a home social gathering or a teenage woman at Eastland carrying Hollister with a Juicy starter necklace and Mek denims. Chief Keef even rapped about Hollister in a track.
Picture Supply: Getty / Tim Boyle
Positive, my relationship with A&F would not seem like that of previous staff within the “White Scorching” documentary, nevertheless it doesn’t suggest the world of wealthy white suburbia was a far-fetched idea for me both.
Whereas “White Scorching” prefaces that Abercrombie & Fitch packaged white elitism and privilege in hopes of promoting clothes, it would not explicitly point out how the whiteness of the model coincided with the whitewashing of popular culture within the ’90s and 2000s. Movies, TV reveals, and even novels depicted preadolescence and early maturity via the lens of whiteness, thinness, and wealth. In movie, there was “Clueless,” “She’s All That,” “Mean Girls,” and “Bring It On.” On tv, you would watch “90210,” “The OC,” “Laguna Seaside,” and “Gossip Girl.” Within the novels I learn as a preteen, there was Lisi Harrison’s The Clique series and Sara Shepherd’s Pretty Little Liars sequence.
Wealthy white teen tales have been inescapable. What all of us watched would inevitably turn out to be what we desired, and Abercrombie & Fitch merely packaged the will for wealth and exclusivity at an reasonably priced value level. With buyers naturally being drawn to wealth signifiers, it is a no-brainer that teenagers who have been deliberately excluded in advertising would nonetheless gravitate to A&F’s product.
In fact, the underbelly of the model’s exclusionary advertising scheme was a tradition of racism and sizeism. Discriminatory hiring practices through the 2000s led to several lawsuits, an eventual $40 million settlement, and CEO Mike Jeffries’ exit.
However whereas the documentary rightfully condemns the Abercrombie & Fitch tradition of yore, it fails to discover the function that Black followers of the model performed in making it a ubiquitous staple of the 2000s — regardless of not being represented and even welcome. Now, because the documentary brings that period again into the limelight at present, Black individuals are as soon as once more excluded from the dialog.
Because the model forges a means ahead, trying to proper its wrongs with extra inclusive sizing and accessible styles, it is also rebuilding its relationship with its Black shoppers. Not solely does A&F commonly characteristic Black fashions and influencers in its promotional instruments and on social media, it lately hosted pop-ups on the world house workplace that includes native Black creators and entrepreneurs.
It is a small step ahead on a protracted and winding highway towards redemption with Black buyers, a bunch who’ve been loyal to the Abercrombie & Fitch model for many years. And that is a narrative price telling.
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