Netflix’s “Red Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch”: Film Review

Until the end Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & FitchThe wacky, unhinged documentary by historian Dr. Netflix’s Treva Lindsay notes that the coveted “all-American” lifestyle brand is “more enlightening than an exception” to the society in which it flourished.

The statement, which is included in a series of other similar comments, points to an interesting question this documentary should ask about the rise, destruction and renewal of the brand, but never does: Why – rather than how much – Did Abercrombie & Fitch promise to delete it?

The doctor turns his subject on with a mixture of admiration, respect, and a little disgust. Its director and producer is Alison Kleiman, who recently ran HBO irregular, It brings together a wide range of speakers, from historians like Lindsay and journalists like Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion critic Robin Givhan to former employees and activists. (Clayman with producer Emmett McDermott, who previously worked as editor hollywood reporterAs with Haley Papa.) Subjects sit in front of the camera and easily share their experiences and opinions about a brand that has created its own destiny for promotion, or maybe the word is save  – A specific image of white America.

Before Abercrombie & Fitch was “cool,” a word used frequently throughout the film, it was an elite masculinity retailer. She was aspirational and practical. The store, founded in 1892, was a place where men like Teddy Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway bought fishing gear, books and shaving cream. Images from old catalogs show a brand that is already ready to activate a gentle and rigorous lifestyle at the same time. When the company hit a rough patch, retail mogul Leslie Wexler, whose brands include Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works, backed off. He bought it in 1988 and hired Mike Jeffries as CEO in 1992.

This installation ushered in a new era for Abercrombie & Fitch, positioning itself between the sexuality of Calvin Klein and the more conservative Ralph Lauren. It was provocative but earthy, sexy but attainable. It reduced the definition of “nice” and forced users to feel bad about being out of shape. The company’s marketing strategy – high-end stores, quarterly magazines, campus ambassadors – looks good in this age when brands are a way of life that is under the sway of micro and macro influencers. But at that time it was relatively advanced.

White hot, which follows a crude chronological order, analyzes how this advertising strategy, which included the hiring of famous fashion photographer Bruce Weber, caused a fever for the brand. The only thing better than having an Abercrombie was working there.

Klayman is quickly moving from narrating the brand’s popularity to seeing it fall. When he and his team delve deeper into the employer brand, they find cracks in the original facade. Interviews with former employees reflect the brand’s appeal to its target audience (ages 18-22) and young people, indicating how it shaped the concept of being American. But it’s hard to keep up with all the voices and their different narratives relating to different and equally difficult parts of the brand’s failure, from labor practices to workplace culture. Tighter editing and a more cohesive structure would help.

Ironically, Abercrombie’s hiring practices and workplace culture also reflected America as a whole. Kleiman examines the criteria that each store must meet when considering who can represent a brand. Dreadlocks weren’t like gold chains. Hours had to be shortened. “Classic” haircuts, never defined, were as good as “delicate” jewelry for women. The employees we heard about earlier are back, this time revealing their involvement in the 2003 class action lawsuit against Abercrombie & Fitch for discriminatory practices against people of color. The brand sold a dream that not everyone promised.

In 2015, the United States Supreme Court will rule on another discrimination case, this time against Samantha Elauf, a Muslim woman who was denied her job at an Abercrombie store in Tulsa, Oklahoma, because she was wearing a headscarf during an interview. He also appears in a documentary where he recounts his passage through the highest court in the country – and ironically points out how the only dissenting opinion came from Judge Clarence Thomas – and as a tenor of the supports and contraindications he encountered along the way.

Abercrombie & Fitch used to present its racist practices in vague phraseology. Words like “cool” and “classic” were used aggressively, while their meaning was unclear. Although White hot Valuing itself as an exhibition, its biggest frustration comes from parsing Abercrombie & Fitch’s own terms. What were “legal” and “classic” codes for? What enthusiasm touched the brand to give people a particular vision of its aesthetic appeal and appeal as universal? The brand, like the America it sought to protect and defend, flourished with elitism and obscurity, and still does.

In 2017, Abercrombie & Fitch hired Fran Horowitz-Bonades as CEO. “Promoting a brand isn’t always easy,” he said in an interview with CNBC that year. Determined to tarnish the company’s reputation, he adds: “We are no longer the brand we used to be. We can clean up our social channels; Delete history”.

A “clean-up” of the brand’s history, as Horowitz-Bonadis puts it, is a reassuring but surprising proposition. The United States is a country obsessed with transforming itself, changing without responsibility. Now that Abercrombie & Fitch is losing money, now that they can no longer be downloaded without verification, they decide to go in another direction. But what good is a future that doesn’t struggle with its past? I want this question too White hot I tried to answer.