WHITE HOT: THE RISE & FALL OF ABERCROMBIE & FITCH
You're strolling through the linoleum wasteland of your local shopping mall, gorging on Auntie Anne's and wondering how to flatten your already flat Vera Bradley wallet. And then... the smell hits you. That overpowering, plastic-y musk—the aromatic equivalent of a popped collar. In a trance, you follow that scent, and the sound of pulsating generic club beats. You enter a cave, into some dark shrine to the deity that is the almighty ab. This is Abercrombie & Fitch.
As a cusper, I still feel traumatized by this era—more specifically by the overpriced, cologne-drenched t-shirts that seemed specifically designed to be as unflattering as possible for my body type in middle school. So, I was excited to watch WHITE HOT: THE RISE & FALL OF ABERCROMBIE & FITCH (trailer here) as soon as it dropped on Netflix. Like the documentary points out, A&F is fascinating not only because it was horribly problematic (racist, fatphobic, Islamophobic, you name it), but because it was so unabashed about it. In fact, hardly anyone batted an eye in 2006 when then-CEO Mike Jeffries proudly called the brand "exclusionary." While the history of the clothing giant as we know it is riddled with controversies, it managed to (more or less) survive, which says a lot about where society stands in the slow trek to progress. This is a point WHITE HOT makes but doesn't quite follow through on, failing to dive into the complex dynamic between company and culture. But the doc had a lot of ground to cover, and it managed to hit the main points pretty well. I'm just happy the conversation is being had. Next up, Brandy Melville...
—Alicia Devereaux, Development Assistant
