Mr. Handsome Caught in a Shitstorm

[unhappycamper]

http://watchingamerica.com/News/207657/mr-handsome-caught-in-a-shitstorm/

“We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends.”

Mr. Handsome Caught in a Shitstorm
Die Tageszeitung, Germany
By Marco Fieber
Translated By Ron Argentati
17 May 2013
Edited by Lau­rence Bouvard

The U.S. clothing chain Abercrombie & Fitch is considered a young and ultrahip brand. Its store interiors have an atmosphere similar to a combined discotheque and fashion runway, all helped along by beach party-like background music, opaque windows, plastic palm trees and an almost pungent, sweet-smelling mist that envelops the customers.

Mike Jeffries, the Biff Tannen look-alike CEO of this clothing chain of well over 1,000 stores, is especially keen on maintaining this image of eternal beauty, youth and perfection. He seldom gives interviews, but when this 68-year-old does speak, his words often produce a lot of head shaking, such as in the interview where he said that A&F would employ only good-looking people in its outlets because, in his words, “We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends.”

Mr. Jeffries went on to describe A&F's preferred customer base: “In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids. A lot of people don’t belong, and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.” That was in 2006.

~snip~

The resulting shitstorm apparently hit Abercrombie & Fitch where it lives: On Thursday, Jeffries walked back his earlier comments on A&F's Facebook page, where he complained that the seven-year-old quotation had been taken out of context and that the company is “completely opposed to any discrimination, bullying, derogatory characterizations or other anti-social behavior based on race, gender, body type or other individual characteristics."

[southernyankeebelle]

1. Guess for him to walk it back now is because it is hurting their bottom line. Well

then let the "cool kids" bail him company out.

[Warpy]

2. I guess he forgot that the high school ruling class

was a very tiny clique. Leaving the other kids out by being so exclusionary is going to hurt his sales and rightly so.

I remember the core group of blonde, Plantagenet WASP girls who were acknowledged as the popular kids numbered about eight in a graduating class of nearly 1000. 0.8% of the population is not going to keep any business afloat for long, especially a clothing business. And yes, those girls were nasty bullies, so the rest of us weren't exactly wannabes who'd slavishly follow their fashion choices.

The clique I started of intellectual nerdy freaks was much larger, but nobody targeted us with fashion.

I guess Jeffries was nurtured in the hothouse environment of an all male prep school and missed out on what's really going on with his target group.

Either he's going to have to put up with "unattractive fatties" over a size eight in his stores or he's going to find himself bankrupt.

[AnneD]

4. Which is why....

Walmart and Target make the money they do and A&F make what they do.

[Cooley Hurd]

3. I would never buy their crap - they put their logo on everything!

Hey A&F... you want to use my body for advertising, then, fuck you, pay me!

[mahatmakanejeeves]

5. I get royalties from A&F every time they use my picture,

,

so I can't complain too much.

Anyway, I like the sentiment expressed by the writer of a letter to the editor of the Washington Post last week. He said that people should give away A&F clothes to the homeless. Seeing the homeless wear A&F, kids will avoid A&F like the plague.