The arrival in the UK of American lifestyle brand Abercrombie & Fitch has been greeted in some quarters with untrammelled delight. The opening of its London store, it is believed, may spark interest in the "jock" look: sportswear redolent of the US high school locker room.
I'm not so sure we should break out the cheerleaders and marching band. It's not only the name - somehow redolent of Victorian grave-robbers - that makes Abercrombie & Fitch seem a bit sinister. A 2005 Salon.com profile made the company sound like a cross between the Aryan Nations and the Branch Davidians, presided over by a sixtysomething CEO who wears ripped jeans and is "dedicated to realising his singular vision of idealised youth".
A 2002 Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt depicted coolie-hatted Asians and the slogan Two Wongs Can Make It White. Two years later, the firm paid out $40m to settle a lawsuit by minority employees who said they were denied employment or forced to work in back rooms. Then there was the Abercrombie & Fitch thong for pre-teen girls bearing the words "eye candy" and "wink wink". I am not making this up.
Meanwhile, there was a problem: the fans look part-time American locker room. Reappropriating we in Britain sport, in sorrow, always with tracksuited proof children in your local bus shelter. In the best you like someone saw hooting music television channel audience man, I thought: "spring: yes, they look very vulgar and thick, I'll do it more like." If there is no way, you'll look likely to be tilted cistern around banned real estate, exercise some dangerous dog ACTS.
I'm not so sure we should break out the cheerleaders and marching band. It's not only the name - somehow redolent of Victorian grave-robbers - that makes Abercrombie & Fitch seem a bit sinister. A 2005 Salon.com profile made the company sound like a cross between the Aryan Nations and the Branch Davidians, presided over by a sixtysomething CEO who wears ripped jeans and is "dedicated to realising his singular vision of idealised youth".
A 2002 Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt depicted coolie-hatted Asians and the slogan Two Wongs Can Make It White. Two years later, the firm paid out $40m to settle a lawsuit by minority employees who said they were denied employment or forced to work in back rooms. Then there was the Abercrombie & Fitch thong for pre-teen girls bearing the words "eye candy" and "wink wink". I am not making this up.
Meanwhile, there was a problem: the fans look part-time American locker room. Reappropriating we in Britain sport, in sorrow, always with tracksuited proof children in your local bus shelter. In the best you like someone saw hooting music television channel audience man, I thought: "spring: yes, they look very vulgar and thick, I'll do it more like." If there is no way, you'll look likely to be tilted cistern around banned real estate, exercise some dangerous dog ACTS.
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