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The cool store that could have changed my life (if only I were cool to begin with)
Abercrombie's quest for "cool' customers
Alaina Johns
As a size 12-14 woman, let me tell you: Mike Jeffries may have ruined my entire life. In 2006, the CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch told Benoit Denizet-Lewis of Salon that his preppy "all-American" college-kid clothing brand caters exclusively to slender, "attractive" people.
"A lot of people don't belong [in our clothes], and they can't belong," explained Jeffries, whose stores pointedly refuse to carry plus-size clothes for women. "Are we exclusionary? Absolutely."
According to Denizet-Lewis, Jeffries restricts his retail hires to "good-looking people," because "good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people."
Those comments somehow lay relatively dormant for seven years, only to inflame the blogosphere earlier this month. (Hey, it's the Internet, not the American Philosophical Society.) Since then, angry women have been organizing Abercrombie boycotts and I have been covering all the mirrors in my apartment.
Jeffries's dread that a girl of my size might some day pollute an Abercrombie store naturally shook me to my blubbery core. On the other hand, his comments did ease some confusion in my mind about exactly what he's selling. From what I've glimpsed in Abercrombie's store on my way to Sears, I had the impression that the store mostly sold muscular, naked Caucasian male torsos.
Confessing to my hubby
But in my Old Navy jeans, off-brand T-shirt and New Balance sneakers, who am I to argue with the chief executive of a major retailer? Once Jeffries's message got through to me, I called my husband to confess.
"Honey," I sobbed, "do you remember that petite, pretty girl I told you about who used to roll her eyes at me in senior year English? Well… what would you say if I told you only one of us was wearing Abercrombie and Fitch?" The conversation was short, and the divorce lawyer called soon after.
About the same time, I received a cryptic e-mail from my publisher. She said that while I certainly had had many unique ideas to contribute to her magazine, Mike Jeffries had finally emboldened her to tell me that I lack the physique that would attract the kind of stories she wanted to tell. But she wished me the best.
Heading to the mall
I logged onto Facebook to update my relationship status from married to single, only to find that the only people who hadn't unfriended me were my mom and my former co-worker's dog, who somehow maintains his own page.
To gauge my plight, I went to the Willow Grove Mall and lingered outside Abercrombie's doors in my purple-rimmed spectacles and worn Timberland boots. A pair of size-two girls with long platinum ponytails walked out, talking about the party at Stephanie's after the big game. But they didn't invite me, so I wiped my tears and slunk into Macy's.
Denizet-Lewis reports that in 2004 Abercrombie paid $40 million to settle a class-action lawsuit from minority applicants who claimed they were denied employment or forced to work in back rooms. Do you suppose there might be a place in their back rooms for people like me?
Chicken and egg
To be honest, the biggest philosophical question raised by Jeffries isn't whether or not I should throw my well-endowed form off a cliff (or whether he should throw himself off, for forcing me to feel that way). It's a classic chicken-or-egg conundrum.
"In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids," Jeffries told Denizet-Lewis. "Candidly, we go after the cool kids," which Jeffries defines as the "attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends."
But here's the question implicitly raised by Jeffries: Does shopping at Abercrombie's make you cool? Or does the presence of cool kids in the store make Abercrombie's cool? Who needs whom?
In other words, could I have charted a different life ten years ago if I'd worn Abercrombie's cool duds on campus? Or would the fat-girl alarms have begun to wail as soon as I crossed the threshold?
Republicans with toddlers
I'd like to ask my cool classmates whether wearing Abercrombie's tees back in college made a difference in their lives. But today they're nurses, lawyers, baristas, administrative assistants, ministers, musicians, government bureaucrats or all-American wives with stellar Republican credentials and toddlers— in short, too busy to talk to the likes of me.
But at least they have time for a man in his late 60s with dyed-blond hair who wears distressed jeans and whose face looks as if it was just blown up with a bicycle pump. Mike Jeffries: Coolness personified!
"A lot of people don't belong [in our clothes], and they can't belong," explained Jeffries, whose stores pointedly refuse to carry plus-size clothes for women. "Are we exclusionary? Absolutely."
According to Denizet-Lewis, Jeffries restricts his retail hires to "good-looking people," because "good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people."
Those comments somehow lay relatively dormant for seven years, only to inflame the blogosphere earlier this month. (Hey, it's the Internet, not the American Philosophical Society.) Since then, angry women have been organizing Abercrombie boycotts and I have been covering all the mirrors in my apartment.
Jeffries's dread that a girl of my size might some day pollute an Abercrombie store naturally shook me to my blubbery core. On the other hand, his comments did ease some confusion in my mind about exactly what he's selling. From what I've glimpsed in Abercrombie's store on my way to Sears, I had the impression that the store mostly sold muscular, naked Caucasian male torsos.
Confessing to my hubby
But in my Old Navy jeans, off-brand T-shirt and New Balance sneakers, who am I to argue with the chief executive of a major retailer? Once Jeffries's message got through to me, I called my husband to confess.
"Honey," I sobbed, "do you remember that petite, pretty girl I told you about who used to roll her eyes at me in senior year English? Well… what would you say if I told you only one of us was wearing Abercrombie and Fitch?" The conversation was short, and the divorce lawyer called soon after.
About the same time, I received a cryptic e-mail from my publisher. She said that while I certainly had had many unique ideas to contribute to her magazine, Mike Jeffries had finally emboldened her to tell me that I lack the physique that would attract the kind of stories she wanted to tell. But she wished me the best.
Heading to the mall
I logged onto Facebook to update my relationship status from married to single, only to find that the only people who hadn't unfriended me were my mom and my former co-worker's dog, who somehow maintains his own page.
To gauge my plight, I went to the Willow Grove Mall and lingered outside Abercrombie's doors in my purple-rimmed spectacles and worn Timberland boots. A pair of size-two girls with long platinum ponytails walked out, talking about the party at Stephanie's after the big game. But they didn't invite me, so I wiped my tears and slunk into Macy's.
Denizet-Lewis reports that in 2004 Abercrombie paid $40 million to settle a class-action lawsuit from minority applicants who claimed they were denied employment or forced to work in back rooms. Do you suppose there might be a place in their back rooms for people like me?
Chicken and egg
To be honest, the biggest philosophical question raised by Jeffries isn't whether or not I should throw my well-endowed form off a cliff (or whether he should throw himself off, for forcing me to feel that way). It's a classic chicken-or-egg conundrum.
"In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids," Jeffries told Denizet-Lewis. "Candidly, we go after the cool kids," which Jeffries defines as the "attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends."
But here's the question implicitly raised by Jeffries: Does shopping at Abercrombie's make you cool? Or does the presence of cool kids in the store make Abercrombie's cool? Who needs whom?
In other words, could I have charted a different life ten years ago if I'd worn Abercrombie's cool duds on campus? Or would the fat-girl alarms have begun to wail as soon as I crossed the threshold?
Republicans with toddlers
I'd like to ask my cool classmates whether wearing Abercrombie's tees back in college made a difference in their lives. But today they're nurses, lawyers, baristas, administrative assistants, ministers, musicians, government bureaucrats or all-American wives with stellar Republican credentials and toddlers— in short, too busy to talk to the likes of me.
But at least they have time for a man in his late 60s with dyed-blond hair who wears distressed jeans and whose face looks as if it was just blown up with a bicycle pump. Mike Jeffries: Coolness personified!
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