Abercrombie and Fitch

Netflix's new documentary “White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch” considers darker side of the onetime mainstay of mall culture.

Abercrombie & Fitch staff have exposed the abhorrent racism and discrimination they experienced in Netflix's new doc.

White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch is Netflix's latest documentary. Here's everything you need to know about former CEO Mike Jeffries.

For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the Radio Times podcast with Jane Garvey. Jeffries then took a role at Midwest clothing chain Paul Harris, before joining A&F in 1992. In 1984, Jeffries founded Alcott & Andrews, a brand targeted at career women.

At its best, White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch offers a potent mix of nostalgia and schadenfreude.

The doc gives us a sense of getting caught up in such a grotesque, racist fashion phenomenon, so much that when a former employee of A&F Quarterly talks about a shattering realization he had watching Sam Raimi’s “ Spider-Man”—that Peter Parker's bully was dressed head to toe in A&F—you can almost understand his surprise. And we get to meet “armpit guy,” one of a few male models whose body was put on shopping bags, and who also clues us into the alleged predatory nature of Bruce Weber, the photographer who created the A&F image. With the on-screen inclusion of a lot of former brains and bods behind the company, it becomes clear how much the company used youth—one woman talks about how there were no copywriters for the graphic tees, it was just whatever young designers came up with. It is informative about the ways “mad genius” Jeffries perfected selling sex and popularity to teenagers, taking a brand name that used to specialize in outdoor wear and turning it into American prep. Klayman has a bit more direction when she directs the audience’s desire for outrage on how the company embodied the counter-intuitive approach of exclusionary business practices, showing how their focus on six-pack fascism and predominantly white leadership led to their downfall. At its best, “White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch” offers a potent mix of nostalgia and schadenfreude.

A former Abercrombie & Fitch recruiter breaks down the brand's infamous “Look Policy” in this clip from Netflix's new "White Hot" documentary.

Once you finally made your way to the door, you were greeted by a pair of shirtless (and often white) employees that looked exactly like the models featured in the brand’s campaigns — if there wasn’t a queue to get inside, that is. That façade presented to customers was the epitome of the A&F branding during what was arguably its heyday in popularity, led by then-CEO Mike Jeffries. Unarguably, not all customers were represented and catered to. Even from blocks away, the pungently sweet A&F smell would “lure” you in — if you were resilient enough to bear it.

Netflix dropped its new documentary 'White Hot' about the rise and fall of Abercrombie & Fitch. But what happened to former CEO Mike Jeffries and his net ...

The townhouse appears to have finally been sold in September of 2018 for just $12 million, according to Zillow. "It has been an honor to lead this extraordinarily talented group of people," Jeffries said in a statement at the time. And he is also credited in the doc for its meteoric downfall as a result of exclusionary and discriminatory hiring and marketing practices. Jeffries does not appear to have a public LinkedIn, Twitter, or Instagram account. Elle Décor described his pad as a vine-covered townhouse featuring floor-to-ceiling windows, polished nickel, and rooms covered in mirrors. Jeffries led the mega-popular brand to great success in the '90s and early 2000s.

Mike Jeffries, who led Abercrombie & Fitch during its dramatic rise and fall, is featured prominently in Netflix's new documentary "White Hot," which is out ...

In 2012, Bloomberg reported on an “Aircraft Standards” manual for the A&F executive jet, written by Jeffries’s longtime life partner Matthew Smith. (The manual was made public in an age-discrimination lawsuit brought against the company by a former pilot, according to Bloomberg.) The manual included 40 pages of highly detailed instructions, including what kind of underwear aircraft staff should wear and the seating arrangements for Jeffries’s dogs. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. In the story, Jeffries is described as a “quirky perfectionist and control freak,” who always goes through the revolving doors at A&F headquarters twice and never passes other employees on the stairwells. Wexner, on the other hand, was the king of retail; he was the CEO of A&F’s then-parent company L Brands, which owned stores like The Limited and Victoria’s Secret. The documentary describes how it was Jeffries’ strategy to center this new iteration of A&F around elitism, sex, and exclusivity. At the time, Jeffries was known as the former president of Alcott & Andrews, a women’s retail chain that filed for bankruptcy in 1989. Netflix’s new documentary White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch charts the messy trajectory of the once-cooler-than-cool mall store that peaked in the ‘90s and early 2000s, only to come crashing down after a string of racist, exclusionary controversies.

The film details the ways the clothing company had proudly put its "exclusionary" cool kids branding into practice.

As the documentary outlines, a specific theme for the shirts was called "Buddha fest" and featured a cliché portrait of an oversized Buddha drawing. According to the company, Elauf's scarf went against its "Look Policy" and its "classic East Coast collegiate style" dress code. Employees were no longer called "Brand Representatives." Instead, they were divided into two categories with two distinct titles: "Impact" employees were mainly people of color who worked in the back and "model" employees were mainly white people who worked up in the front. And to a nearby female mannequin, Jeffries criticized, "We don't want her to look too butch." The brand's most notorious shirt featured an illustration of the "Wong brothers" who wore matching conical hats and advertised a fictional laundry service. Despite the stereotypical portrayals and offensive rhetoric, the tees were a hit among A&F consumers. A settlement was eventually reached and included a consent decree, requiring the company to change its policies to promote diversity within the workforce, prevent discrimination and appoint a Vice President for Diversity. It goes on to state that a "neatly combed, attractive, natural, classic hairstyle" worn on an image of a white model is acceptable while dreadlocks, which are showcased on a Black model, is unacceptable for both men and women. According to journalist Moe Tkacik, A&F had weekly employee review sheets, which required store managers to rank each of their employees on a look-based scale of "cool to rocks." To help make the process easier, store managers were provided a literal book that strictly outlined "what good-looking looks like." By the 1970s, A&F tanked financially — eventually filing for bankruptcy — and was forced to revamp their brand in order to rejoin the market. "We are selling an experience for our customer, an atmosphere that people want to experience again and again.

IT was so cool, it hired “models” instead of shop assistants – and singer Taylor Swift and Hollywood stars Jennifer Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher.

He said: “It was like he was just there to have fun. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. She said: “Their argument was that if they hired me I would hurt their brand.” One claimed he held up a pair of women’s corduroys and said: “Who the f*** are you designing for? She said: “They noticed a bunch of Asian people in the store. Bobby claims that when when he turned Bruce down for dinner, during a shoot, minutes later he got a call cutting him from the job. They would go and I’d not see them the next day.” The two employees and seven others sued A&F for race discrimination. She said: “After that I was not on the schedule. I haven’t been on the schedule for two months’, and he’s like, ‘No, no, you do. The T-shirt led to protests — and A&F burned its merchandise. Former A&F design director Kelly Blumberg said: “The brand was on top.

New documentary 'White Hot' narrates how the sprawling brand made a mockery – and a multimillion dollar marketing concept – of masculinity.

As the concept of masculinity moves into something more fluid and more open-minded, a quick browse of Abercrombie's webstore shows that the high school jock wears boxy sweater vests, and shorts with five inch inseams, and even Pride hoodies that are on par with the diversity ranges of every other middle bracket brand. For now though, 'Everybody Belongs' at Abercrombie. The plain white tees even say so in rainbow typeface (what else?). But just as A&F cannot be blamed for branded, corporate sexualisation, it was by no means ahead of the curve for inclusivity. It cemented a Eurocentric, quasi-Olympian ideal of masculinity that is still pervasive not just in the gay community, but within pop culture at large. So powerful was the logo that White Hot recounts the induction of one head office employee who was told that they could spell 'Abercrombie' in dogshit on a baseball cap and still sell it for $50. But homogeneity wasn't just a bug with Abercrombie & Fitch. As the Netflix documentary chillingly tells us, it was the feature. It is this strain of whiteness – and the ensuing problematic template for excellence – that built the foundation of Abercrombie and Fitch. For a time, it was one of the most successful American retail stories. And the models – the focus of this sex – sold these clothes despite being shot in very little clothing. Where we were once pummelled with rippling torsos in the darkened corners of an Abercrombie store, we now face them 24/7 from the bright corners of an iPhone. Instagram and TikTok are awash with abs from their respective userbases even as companies push for more body inclusion and diversity in their outputs. White athleticism was the brand. Bruce Weber, the photographer behind Abercrombie's infamous campaigns, worked in tandem with Jeffries to build this image that "fetishized the all-American boy" as one former employee puts it. An official sales report released by Abercrombie in 2003 posted sales of $1.708 billion. But at its peak, the brand was making an absurd amount of cash. "I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch" the lead whined to the musical equivalent of a K-hole by a campfire.

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This documentary explores A&F’s pop culture reign in the late ’90s and early 2000s and how it thrived on exclusion.” However, in the early 2000s, the company became embroiled in scandal with allegations of racist products and discriminatory hiring practices. And you could chart its rise and fall through pop culture.”

There are people of color, sizes up to 3XL and even a Pride-themed collection featuring "gender inclusive" rainbow tees. The brand's Instagram account, ...

"But they didn't have the platform to be able to voice it and now they do." But, like various other documentaries revisiting troubling elements of our not-too-distant past, "White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch" is less an exposé of what happened under his leadership and more a reflection on what we, as a society, allowed to happen. It would be well into the next decade before Jeffries' quote -- and the brand's history of problematic marketing and advertising -- became more of a corporate liability. For all the current messages of inclusion, millennials (and older) will remember an altogether different Abercrombie -- one that took over malls and billboards with an army of attractive models and ripped male torsos. Through interviews with former models, recruiters, store workers and executives, the 88-minute film suggests that appearing cool, attractive and White wasn't just an exercise in branding: it was an active corporate strategy that came at the expense of non-White employees and consumers. The brand's Instagram account, meanwhile, proudly promotes models in wheelchairs, stories of body-positivity and statements of LGBTQ solidarity.

Former employees of disgraced retail giant Abercrombie & Fitch have aired new claims about the company's discriminatory hiring practices in a Netflix ...

We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. That suit was settled in 2012, with the company not admitting wrongdoing. The flagship expanded to a 12-story department store on Madison Avenue, where it sold clothing and sporting goods. Ocampo, Barrientos and Jennifer Sheahan were among the former employees who sued Abercrombie & Fitch for discrimination in 2003. Carla Barrientos, a Black woman, claimed she was taken off her store's rota after requesting to work on the shop floor. Pictured: Ashton Kutcher in one of the adverts But at that moment I was like, "It’s OK to be angry about this",' Yu recounted. You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either.' We don’t market to anyone other than that,' he said. I really don't care what anyone other than our target customer thinks,' he said. It was understood within the company that the employees on the floor all had to be good looking and respect the Abercrombie & Fitch style guidelines. She said she lost her job after a member of the corporate team from the retailer visited her store and 'noticed a bunch of Asian people in the store'.