White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch

source: White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch

Top down this is just a lesson in demographic marketing that exists even if it is offensive, being woke and pressing on one company doesn't make a movie about it, and it isn't really even the rise and fall it is mostly rise and wokeness. Right? Wrong? Doesn't matter it happens because it's all about the corporate bottom dollar. I mean this stuff happens to ANY demographically targeted brand. Should we pick Against All Odds and their urban targeted clothing? Should we pick Sears for targeting men with Craftsman because there was no Craftswoman? Pac Sun? Ron Jon? Is an upscale store considered to be forcing out the poors? Someone will always be offended. Supposedly non discriminatory hiring won't help. A white wino and a well dressed black guy walk into a suit store applying for a job the black guy would get hired. A preppy computer nerd doesn't usually turn up at a Cabela's gun counter. Is it necessarily legal? No. But it's not an exclusive Abercrombie & Fitch issue and didn't need a movie. It's not even the reason brands like A&F fall, people move to new brands because it gets old.

source: White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch

The next documentary some other channel is going to make is "Woke Hot: The Rise and Fall of Netflix". It will be about how a channel that started with a pretty good marketing angle decided to start ramming identity politics down people's throats in one disaster unpleasant project after another and crashed and burned. Here it is Abercrombie & Fitch. I really thought they were going to tell the story of a venerable company, the once high quality brand that went too postmodern, lost its way, started producing its clothes in China and hence lost both its respected old world name and reputation for quality clothes. That might have been an interesting story. Nope. Not even close. It turned out to be yet another (how many is it now?) story about people complaining that some company isn't nice to them, and whose brand was "too white" and actually glorified good looking people, and where does that leave the ugly and fat people out there? Excluded. This is where my niece would come in an say "do you want some cheese with that whine?" For me, the new stock phrase is that these are now "The Days of Whine and Poses". It did have one salutary effect -- it shows pretty clearly what is wrong with the civil rights laws in this country. If some company wants to push a particular "look", a "brand" -- something that involves a message that appeals to a particular demographic, what business is it of anyone but their stock shareholders? A Hip Hop/Rap fashion magazine might push African themes, or Urban themes, with the corresponding black people to sell them. Country and southern whites might want the same, or someone wanting to tap into the Laplanders ethnic group might want to find some Lapps to have as spokesmen (shriek, "but, but you should say 'spokespeople', grief, I'm feeling faint.") It's all too boring and silly. To be fair, me and the wife had decided the day before to cancel Netflix, but in wandering around the channel seeing if there was anything I wanted to watch before it turns off, this came on, and it simply confirmed why Netflix is utter garbage now. It's too bad, it used to not try my patience every night, but it's too much.

I love me some documentaries, but this is not a good one. I don't even think I would go as far as to call it a documentary to be honest. This film is a weird rant from a tornado of talking heads. A gathering of random former employees, and some other people, give their opinions about A&F brand. And they all seem to have a problem with race. As if it was illegal, or even wrong, to have a business that is targeting an audience. On the subject of random people and their race oriented opinions, funny thing is that Dr. Treva Lindsey mentioned at the very beginning that she used to walk by A&F shops and all she could see is that they were "so thin and white"... ..while at the same time, she admits that she herself would wear clothes from designers like FUBU, Mecca, and these urban wear designers, right as a string of exclusively black people are shown on screen, and guess what.. ..not even a word about those shops targeting black people. Didn't you notice Dr. Lindsey that those shops were black, or (to keep the analogy) black and not thin?

There was so much more about A&F, as well as the Wexner empire. We needed more tracing the money trails and payouts. Sexual harassment was barely detailed. The diversity officer was allowed to not answer questions asked. This was basically the video version of a wikipedia entry. Why then did I give it five points? At least it brought the topic up about corporations and branding, targeting consumers, and the impact CEO's decisions can have on consumers' lives and perceptions. Really, however, it was superficial, which is very sad.

I am a little shocked that when I came here to see reviews I saw people saying basically that people shouldn't shop there if they didn't like it. It's 2022 and there are still people who support this brand?! I mean even if you are white and "cool" do you really want to defend something that would tell you that you suck if you for example get fat? I am sure that the new CEO has good intentions, but even the current rebranding looks so forced and inauthentic that it's difficult to digest. The documentary was pretty disappointing though, I mean obviously racial discrimination was a major problem with the brand, but there was so much more to dissect. Just the slogan on one of the t-shirt "i had a nightmare that I was a brunette" how low-key offensive and problematic is that to half the population? There was so much more that could be addressed. I feel that they spent too much time picturing why A&F was successful instead of going into the detail on the problematic behaviours. This is why this documentary feels to be done with not as much effort as I expected from a contemporary documentary movie. I even heard a local story (when I was living in the UK) of a muslim girl being discriminated in around 2013-2014 by a manager, that I had worked for in another retail chain and hoped it would be featured in this documentary too but clearly they thought one story is enough... Funny thing I was once asked on the street in 2014 to come for an interview to work at A&F as a model and believe it or not I didn't really know what A&F was (I am early gen-z eastern-european guy) and was pretty surprised to see on the website that the way they understand "model" was just a retail worker for minimum wage salary who is obviously white and relatively attractive. I knew how problematic it was so I never went for an interview. Now I am very happy I didn't.

They really missed the mark with their agenda here, it's almost backfired. If anything, I support Abercrombie even more after this documentary and I honestly went into it thinking I would be shocked. I am going to go shop at Abercrombie tomorrow as a result of this absolute drivel. You can't have your cake and eat it guys... there are companies and shops that target their audience for very niche audiences, if you don't like what a company sells then don't shop there. Simple as that.

This started out bringing back a lot of memories of being a teenager hanging out at the mall and what not. That was really surreal. I expected more from this however. Why did they briefly bring up the SEXUAL assaults/harassments of models etc. Then moved right back to the diversity whining? Why no in depth discussion/digging into the fact Wes Lexner is INCREDIBLY problematic?! His connections to Jeffrey Epstein? Overall this turned out to be all about discrimination.

Woke movement hits again... the story is incredibly one-sided. And what's the point? If you don't want something, buy something else. Everybody should be free to buy what they want and hire whoever they want. Nobody was forced to work and buy there. This woke movement is all that is currently wrong with this world. These people don't understand freedom.