"White Hot" - an uneasy (re)viewing of Abercrombie & Fitch

Anyone working in the brand, retail or experience design fields should spend an evening watching Netflix's 'White Hot' - a documentary about the rise and fall of massclusionary fashion brand Abercrombie & Fitch*.

Prepare for an evening of mental turmoil reconciling moments of (it's hard to use the word given the greater context) admiration with utter revulsion - revulsion for what the brand stood for, how it operated, and its culture. Believe me, the scales crash down on the side of the latter.

There were things that made Abercrombie successful: really successful. I had forgotten that for me it was part of their retail signature "make it dark, make it loud" that created the outstanding impression - far beyond the parade of semi naked (so, so white) bodies. Simple, powerful: a store that felt like a club or a party - dark to the point you could barely see the clothes - it was a genuinely differentiated retail experience. 

Then there was the photography: whilst there were many brands playing in the 'sex sells' arena at the time, it was incredible to see Bruce Weber's timeless homoerotic photographic style leading the communication for what was one of the leading high street fashion brands.  But with all things Abercrombie, when you dive deeper, the positives therein are also crushed, like meadow grass under wrestling shirtless boys.

Even when you look at the potential positives of the A&F Campus - still the north star of internal culture for many corporates today - the overwhelming whiteness of the A&F organisation just underlines the links between establishing Campuses and  suburban 'white flight' in post war US - a fact oddly not mentioned in the documentary. As you may have guessed from the name, there's a lot to unpack about the organisation's systemic racism under then CEO Mike Jeffries - I don't think that's a spoiler, but I'll leave that to far better qualified commentators in the documentary.

There are positives though in a general sense at least. This passage of retail history flew by broadly uncommented on and it's easy to forget that it was not that long ago - but, as the documentary says, we're now benefitting from being in a place that customers and employees now have the platforms to hold an organisation accountable and keep it in the spotlight of scrutiny.

It's well worth a watch - at the very least its an evening shouting at the TV - it’s the most exercise I've done since 2019…

*No relation to Landor&Fitch - but you know that…