So Abercrombie and Fitch is now worried about their reputation ? This is after years of trying to evoke the sexuality of Calvin Klein and the anti-fashion of Ralph Lauren? This is after discrimination suits, because minorities do not fit their image? This is after successfully selling grunge in a post-grunge era to kids that are too young to appreciate the grunge movement when no other designer could do so? This also comes on the heels of having diluted their brand through Hollister, and failing to compete with the big boys through Ezra Fitch?
Abercrombie and Fitch are the biggest hypocrites out there. When all of the preps who used to wear Ralph Lauren abandoned the label for Abercrombie and Fitch when the Polo label no longer represented old wealth but new wealth in the ghetto no one at the corporation cried foul. No one had any issues when minorities finally came around and “discovered” the brand 20 years after the fact and started wearing it as though there was no tomorrow. But now it is a problem because the cast of Jersey Shore wants to wear their clothing? They should be lucky that anyone wants to wear their trashy clothing.
If people want to pay over a hundred dollars for a dress shirt with a frayed collar and holes in it that is their business. At the same time, if that is the clothing that you choose to design and you use trashy marketing schemes to sell those clothes to consumers, then you end up with whatever customers you can get. I thought about wearing Abercrombie and Fitch, but their high prices, dim lit stores, and the fact that I can find the same thing for less from some other designer or at a good thrift store or consignment shop reminded me just how humorous the idea of taking this label seriously is. Why would I go back to the nineties just to wear some clothing I probably already have in my closet?
I get that kids want to try out styles that many of us wore decades ago, that is simply the way that it is. Kids wear clothing from the eighties and try to look like Madonna, Prince, or Michael Jackson, because that was not their time and they want to experience what it must have felt like back then. Trends come and trends go. I do not even like the Jersey Shore; I think it is a very misogynistic show and that it is an caricaturization of the beach culture, at best. To me, it is just another way in which we are dumbed down through ignorant reality shows. But if the people who watch that show turn around and buy your merchandise, why would you turn them away? Abercrombie and Fitch is about one of the biggest marketing schemes ever perpetrated on our youth when it comes to fashion (then again we had “The Gap”) but that is the American way. Maybe now that Abercrombie and Fitch is considering paying people not to wear their clothing, a decent, respectable designer may considering paying them to wear something different …