Untitled

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Photo Collage, A&F Quarterly images taken (1999–2006)
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Over the past twelve years the retail clothing
company Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) has generated much fiscal success, along with critical
attention in widespread media coverage. In response analysts have praised the retailer for its
annual increase in net profits while critics have
vilified the company for its aesthetic elitism and
highly erotic image campaigns. Moreover, what is
extraordinary about the discussion of A&F is an
unwavering curiosity of why so many consumers are motivated to purchase a brand that in its
visual representation excludes them. However,
what pales in comparison to such an ambivalent
curiosity is an inability to discuss the irrational
tendencies, visual nuances, and structural fissures
that inform commodity expression and identification. In the wake of a $40-million settlement
responding to allegations of racial and gender
discrimination, what is often unexplored is how
the company has culled ideals of leisure, freedom,
and authenticity into a brand image that functions to obscure multiple strands of discrimination with taste, style, and distinction.1
Providing a more relational account I will
follow the visual and textual rhetoric used in
A&F’s marketing images to commodify social
values for viewer identification. In doing so, I
aim in this project to trace how social structures
of marginalization operate, whereby the viewer is
asked to participate in an iteration of its logic.
Highlighting this interchange will reveal the underlying fictions that function and succeed in
today’s apparel market and illustrate how its imagery can feed off and coproduce rhetoric of the
dominant culture.
Inscribing Tradition
In the last decade of the twentieth century, a new
campaign of Abercrombie & Fitch images emerged.
Following a distinctive brand history of importing
British fashions to America’s elite, this moment
marked a significant shift in the company’s marketing strategy. Advertising Director Sam Shahid
and photographer Bruce Weber were brought in to
develop a new visual identity for the A&F brand.
The two were known for the fresh energy they
brought to marketing and advertising campaigns
in the 1980s; whose sexual provocation stirred up
major controversy and profitability for clients such
as Calvin Klein and Banana Republic. Abercrombie & Fitch endorsed this team to produce a similar image campaign that celebrated sexuality and
what’s “cool” to reach the company’s new target
market: college kids with disposable income.
The images alone purveyed an artful life and
well-defined physicality to much delight. Abercrombie customers could see, discern meaning,
and inscribe their taste amongst such newly informed images. Adding to this revision, nostalgia
became a strong element to continue A&F’s inherited tradition, yet with a twist; instead of selling
outdoors gear, the new look for A&F was vintage.
What appeared to be another leisure brand profiting from its prestige pricing, like Banana Republic,
Eddie Bauer, and J. Crew, was in fact a new store
with an old name waiting to be discovered by a
younger generation.
Aimed to distinguish its brand from peers,
A&F used the provocative imagery to communicate a highly aestheticized model of authenticity.
Such unprecedented imagery was an essential ele-
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ment of the retailer’s visual display. Large-format
black-and-white photographs that depicted highly intimate and sensuously charged photography
representing joy, attraction, and desire lured consumers into the store’s otherwise traditional-looking space. In 1994 I was an unknowing consumer
who was enticed by A&F’s provocative imagery
and time-honored grandeur. Inside the store large
wooden roundtables and deep-textured carpets
emitted an aura of an old lodge, emblematic of
a classical era—or more distinctly its rewards. A
trophy of great sportsmanship—the head of a
bull moose—was mounted on the wall beyond
the checkout counter. A seemingly simple artifact
of an outdoors theme was rather an invocation
of Teddy Roosevelt and the nickname of his Progressive Party. The symbolic moose contained a
deeper metaphor for virility and conquest, one
that would later become the chosen logo of
A&F’s new image.
The function of Abercrombie & Fitch’s visual
strategy was to persuade consumers to partake in
a style of the past and render themselves timeless
through commodity expression: an Oxford shirt, a
belt, and jeans—style for their identity. I perceived
these artifacts as social agreements, projections,
and acknowledgements of a shared system of behaviors. As a result, I participated in a new club
that was forming, one that upheld nostalgia as its
belief, yet only for those in the know.
In his book Brand Hijack: Marketing without Marketing, marketing consultant Alex Wipperfurth discusses how consumers tend to claim
brand identity to communicate their membership
to a particular lifestyle, association, or activity. This
theory is substantiated when looking at the brand
loyalty that is exhibited in relation to Abercrombie
& Fitch, whose brand has become a social badge
for its consumers and employees, lending them cachet or an aura of privilege and entitlement.2 Consequently distinction is seen, rendered intelligible,
and thus perceived as a plausible social fact. To
great effect it seems that a vintage look provided
by Abercrombie & Fitch hearkened on its cultural
value more than its ability to look exclusive. A
cultural value informed by an a history of wealth,
social standing, and to some degree WASP lineage,
which has nuanced my claim on distinction because—depending on who and what was being
excluded—one always can be seen as something
other than what one claims to be.3 This dynamic
has repeatedly demonstrated itself in my life and in
particular to my experience with the A&F brand
and the preppy image it evoked.
As a youth inculcated with ideals of gallantry,
will, and distinction I fit this image—a character of
ambition who could develop the wit, intelligence,
and chops to find success in any social environment. Or so I felt the image fit me. It greatly influenced my social manner, tastes, and preferences,
all shared expressions of status and association upper-class citizens once used to express refinement,
secure lineage, and preserve privilege. Similarly,
donning the look of a preparatory school upbringing has often allowed visibility (more so to some
than to others). Depending on the social context
Abercrombie & Fitch clothing has styled me in
various ways, as I’ve been identified as a “sell-out,”
conservative, privileged or acceptable, but nevertheless authentic.
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Outfitting: Conquest and Preservation
Near the end of the nineteenth century a series of
events were happening in the United States as the
country was vying to establish itself as an imperial
nation. Two major shifts left a significant impact in
the role of business, social identification, and the
citizenry. The first being the back-to-nature and
Progressive movements; the second, a shift in the
use of advertisements intended to assuage desire
through a sense of social mobility and style.
Largely influenced by newly developing theories in psychoanalysis, Roy Sheldon and Egmont
Arens wrote an influential business guide in 1932,
called Consumer Engineering,4 in which the authors recommended that businesses start to design
products that would exploit the sublimated senses
of their consumers. Sheldon and Arens believed
that by catering to human senses products created
with prehension in mind could promise consumer
pleasure and increase profitability; and as Stuart
Ewen has suggested, the imaginations of citizens
had become a new target for manipulation. The
two recognized the limited-life span of trends in
the marketplace and constructed a strategy for industries to focus on maintaining consumer interest in consumption. They imagined an unlimited
potential for the role of mass media to carry out
this agenda.
Between 1890 and 1930 the back-to-nature
and Progressive movements reached their height.
The relationship between nature and class privilege
was a particularly nuanced one; many U.S. citizens
were becoming discontent about class relations
and the rise in economic determinism.5 Wealthy
North American citizens of the time were becom-
ing uncertain of their fate in the face of powerrising reform movements. As a result, they collectively committed their monies and resources
to promote ways to maintain a dominant order.
They believed that scientific research, education,
and reform methods were viable efforts to thwart
antagonistic outcomes from the resisting classes. In
the name of science and intellectual enrichment,
ideal citizens—those who could accept a predetermined truth—would be cultivated through efforts
of exhibition, conservation, and eugenics.
Such an agenda was a beneficial link to the
spirited man of the time, Theodore Roosevelt. An
adventurer and man of conquest, Roosevelt was
known for his great hunting escapades and safari
expeditions. The “rough rider” and frequent customer of Abercrombie & Fitch slaughtered thousands of animals under the premise of restoring
“nature” (and some would say man’s domination
over it). This agenda would link him to the wealthy
and elite whose political goals, informed by socialDarwinism and fear, were also thought of as a
form of restoration: interventions for the greater
excellence of mankind, saving humans from detrimental activities of labor uprisings, or the ails of
miscegenation. Scholar Anne McClintock argues
that imperial power and its formation were tied
to domestic relations and the invention of industrial progress.6 It was under these shifting forms of
knowledge and power that distinction and hierarchies were created, resulting in peculiar forms of
public and private identifications. This was when
the invention of race became a necessary element
to legitimate groups of people, as well as to police
those designated as a threat. Tied to masculinity
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left: Abercrombie & Fitch
excerpt, New York Times
(1918)]
right: Abercrombie & Fitch
ad excerpt, New York Times
(1921)]
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and notions of manifest destiny, this occidental
process was deployed domestically, as well as internationally. Abercrombie & Fitch’s role in this development was that it catered to such ideological
motivations. The company reflected and enacted
the logic of imperialism, social engineering, and
the ritual of hunting so that it could more easily
outfit the dominant class.
In 1917 Abercrombie & Fitch opened its
second store in New York on Madison Avenue, a
geographic site that has been synonymous with the
history of twentieth-century advertising in North
America. There the company established its business niche, “Where the Blazed Trail Crosses the
Boulevard,” that became the inscribed motto for
visiting patrons to reflect on as they entered the
store. Located at Madison Avenue and 45th Street
the store occupied twelve stories, with a pool and
log cabin on the roof, each intended to recreate a
scene from New York’s upstate wilderness. Below,
each floor featured displays that resembled dioramas showed a vast assortment of sporting gear and
goods, such as camping, hunting, fishing, archery,
and skiing equipment. Patrons with a penchant for
the outdoors could shop and test the functionality of all gear and equipment onsite. Daily press
advertisements were run in the New York Times
to promote the store and its merchandise. Monochromatic images, both text and image were aimed
at a select class of consumers (wealthy, literate,
European American, and Protestant); each advertisement was infused with tales of evolution, adventure, and authentic tradition. This is evidenced
in the company’s “The Two Frontiers” ad taken
from a New York Times 1918 daily (see Figure 1).
For some patrons A&F was simply a retailer with
the goods needed for their lifestyle activities. For
others, it offered a means to align oneself with the
dominant ideals of the time—leisure, sport, and
travel—all of which could be conveyed through an
A&F outfit.
Coupled with confirming masculinity as a
requisite quality of sportsmen the rhetorical form
in “The Two Frontiers” ad draws upon ideals of
conquest and precedence to promote military men
and sportsmen together, correlating game hunting
to warfare. The text in this ad reads, “[f ]rom the
Little Bighorn, where the frontiersmen trail the
grizzly, to the shell-holes and hell-holes where the
Allies trail the Hun.” With the tone and syntax of
this text denying an author and replacing it with a
collective authority the rhetoric in this ad, in effect,
is more than a sales pitch. Another passage reads,
“[t]his store was built to help the sportsman hunt
big game–enjoy the freedom of Everyman’s blessed
democracy of the woods, the hills and the plains.
True to its purpose, it is whole-heartedly engaged
in assisting the soldier–the modern crusader whose
sportsmanlike duty is to exterminate the greatest
enemy of civilization.”7 This passage reveals the
commercial interest of its producers that aligns
the company with the dominant cultural values
of the time, thereby promoting annihilation as an
expression of possessiveness; where the call to kill
the Hun is not made through an evidentiary claim
of supremacy, it is instead set up as a designation
of responsibility beyond judgment.
The simple nature of the ad’s image does create an illusion. Informed by illustrative style and
text, markers of gender, class, and complexion are
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provided for a viewing customer to recognize and
engage. Under closer scrutiny the gendered archetypes within this ad provide no physiognomic effect. Yet unlike the characters’ inscrutable physical
representations, the white space in the ad loosely
operates as a marker of skin, as each outfits’ detail
functions as an operative cue. Likewise, the image begins to commodify information asking for
identification; in this case two white men: modern
crusader and frontiersman.
In other ads, Abercrombie & Fitch makes an
appeal to a discriminating taste, whereby an imagined visualization is facilitated through a description of the British fabric (figure 2). “Tweeds, homespuns, English cheviots... Scotch sporting fabrics”
are the textual descriptors taken from another New
York Times ad titled “Clothes Which Show Their
Origin,” where an emphasis is attributed to texture
and fabric as indicators of social and economic origin—their superior crafting to be seen and known
by any anglophile.8
Subsequent to the aesthetic tradition authored by adventurers and “ready-made warriors”
like Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Byrd, Amelia Earhart, and Charles Lindbergh a new form of leisure emerged in light of an expanding culture of
consumerism. Still, inspired by a “yearn” for the
outdoors luminaries such as Ernest Hemmingway,
Katherine Hepburn, and John F. Kennedy were
the new patrons of the Abercrombie & Fitch ideal,
each confirming the brand’s designation of luxury,
and transforming its customers’ identity from that
of the adventure seeking sportsman/sportswoman,
to the trendy “outdoorsman.” This predominately
wealthy, European American preserve of “Ameri-
ca’s elite” carried cultural capital over empirical
knowledge and tactical skill.9 It was a generation
of emulation and they wore the Abercrombie &
Fitch brand to signify their dynamic lifestyle, as
well as their aesthetic taste.
Leisure: Distinction and Decline
Theorist Stuart Ewen describes an emphasis on
projecting a lifestyle over an actual experience as
a pretension of significance, implied through nonverbal cues often regarded as style and persona. He
suggests that it is through these details that one
develops a manner of authenticity by objectifying
one’s own subjectivity for public display.10 To this
extent sportspersons’ characters were identified
and defined by their leisurely activities. In a similar
fashion, the leisurely traveler and adventure-seeking explorer were seen and understood by their
manner and aura.
Over time, the sportspersons’ activities
shifted from the safari expeditions to safer more
recreational activities, such as fishing and golf.
Intertwined with notions of vitality and dexterity, as championed in the early press campaigns,
physical traits as well as stylistic choices of Abercrombie & Fitch’s customers were becoming
qualified in the ethos of the brand. Affluent men
and women and their most discernable features
were being mirrored by a brand as it continued
to cater to a more exclusive class of consumers.
Despite shifting changes in public taste and an
expanding middle-class whose consumption patterns provided it access to a symbolic claim of distinction through social artifacts, the Abercrombie
& Fitch ideal remained prevalent well into the
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late 1970s as it was maintained through its exclusive patronage and expensive prices. Yet its inability to keep the company and brand in pace
with economic and social shifts in taste created
financial troubles for the outfitter by the 1960s
and 70s. In contrast to previous eras, the antiestablishment culture of late 60s and 70s proved
to be a significant obstacle. Popular fashion was
unconventional and in direct critique with convention and uniformity. Under these changes in
popular culture, many clothing retailers were able
to reposition themselves with “off-price” selling;
A&F with its high-end specialized goods was not
able to adjust as well. As a result the company
filed for bankruptcy in the late seventies.
In a 1987 Forbes article Ellen Paris once commented on an element of Abercrombie & Fitch’s
troubles: “the number of sportsmen able or willing
to buy $50,000 Holland & Holland shotguns or
$500 Hardy fishing rods dwindled sharply. Sporting goods became a mass, not a class, market.”11
Under new ownership Abercrombie & Fitch continued to operate, but by the turn of the 1980s it
was in fact a complex entity rife with economic
trouble and an unstable market presence. A sporting-goods retailer, Oshman’s purchased the company to leverage its own expanding business on
the cultural equity associated with the Abercrombie & Fitch name. After incorporating a new mix
of merchandising (exercise and home-recreational
equipment) to appeal to a broader consumer base,
more and more loyal customers had become confused with the Abercrombie & Fitch brand, others
disgraced.12
Embodiment: Preppy Fashion and Mobility
In 1988 Leslie Wexner, owner of The Limited
Brands, acquired Abercrombie & Fitch. A selfmade man from the Midwest who had, over forty
years, turned a small women’s store into a $9 billion empire, “the world’s largest specialty fashion
retailer” could see the incongruence in the Abercrombie & Fitch brand and thus wanted to recreate the retailer’s image.13
Well into the nineties, the company began
to redirect its marketing from sportsmen of another era to college kids by turning the style of
its goods to a classic preparatory school look.
Here we have three models garbed in what many
customers and noncustomers see as “the A&F
Look”: a “preppy” look heavily influenced by an
earlier century model of upper-class fashion (figure 3). It was composed of a relatively conservative fashion of classic Oxford shirts, sports jackets, and casual trousers. Following World War II
this look has been a popular and well-identified
marker of status, wealth, and privilege throughout the twentieth century. In a similar manner,
the post-Vietnam War period of the late 70s and
80s brought a return to conservatism. Rejecting
the unconventional styles of beat, hippie, and
bohemian cultures, younger generations culled
a uniformly conventional aesthetic to distance
themselves from their contemporaries by projecting their class distinction, national pride, and
even their sophistication. Viewing this catalogue
image from right to left, a short-haired man outfitted with a corduroy sports jacket with underlying plaid shirt and striped tie, bears a t-shirt with
an A&F crest. A woman is placed squarely next
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to him with her hands resting in her pockets and
plaid scarf around her neck, tucked into her fully
buttoned peacoat. She is a keystone. Adjacent
to her left shoulder is another man in complementary attire who joins her gaze in addressing
the viewer. Surprisingly, this field of gray matter
constitutes a value of truth: the clothing details
that make distinction visible. What the viewer
sees are three models donning a preppy look. One
does not know their bonds; therefore the viewer
is left with only their physical orientations to infer meaning.
The term preppy became the informal term
used to denote a lifestyle traditionally found in
the Northeast region of the United States. It was
a subculture grounded on privilege and entitlement, and what Abercrombie & Fitch describes as
an, “East Coast heritage and Ivy League tradition,”
known for etiquette and codes of dress historically associated with white Anglo-Saxon Protestants
(WASPs), it has become an identifiable aesthetic
through which style and manner alike could be
seen and used to display identity, or one’s sense of
self. Through nonverbal markers and a surface detail of preppiness, lives were assumed to be affluent.
Conversely, the actual Prep-school student whose
inherited lifestyle had become an inspiration for
the “vintage” fashion being sold at Abercrombie &
Fitch wore clothing that was marked by less visible
cues and more punctilious traditions—practices
used to qualify exclusivity. Lisa Birnbach, in her
satirical guide, The Official Preppy Handbook, describes some of the less familiar aspects of upperclass fashion and social custom in the chapter “Ten
Underlying Principles for Men and Women”:
Amateur historians have speculated that
Preppies all dress alike because they
got in the habit from wearing school
uniforms. Not so. Preppies dress alike
because their wardrobes are formed according to fundamental principles that
they absorb from their parents and their
peers. And although the Preppy Look
can be imitated, non-preps are sometimes exposed by their misunderstanding or ignorance of these unspoken rules
[conservatism, neatness, attention to detail, practicality, quality, natural fibers,
anglophilia, specific color blindness, the
sporting look, and androgyny].14
For those who subscribed to the “codes of
conduct” described in her book, it provided some
of the most unexplored elements of having been
from wealth, offering the choice of colleges, style
of dress, and athletic sports as cues of ritual for
those aspiring to have the requisite taste of the upper class (figure 4).
In the United States a sense of social mobility transcended wealth and lineage; celebrity came
to personify an ostentative existence. The popular
media friendly persona emanated superficiality.
This led to a shift from desiring the new and artificial to a nostalgic return to the authentic and
subtle, those things that could be associated with
a past period. The company’s revisionist marketing of upper-class clothing took an element of
the outdoors, such as the jean pant, and meshed
it with sports coats, an Oxford shirt, and a tie to
present a less rigid characteristic of luxury (figure
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figure 3 (left):
A&F Quarterly, Fall (2000)
figure 4, 5 & 6 (above):
A&F Quarterly, Winter
(1999); Christmas Edition
(2002)
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5). Set in outdoor elements, such as the cabin, a
top hat, and steer-buckled belt recall elements of
adventure, dandyism, and freedom. Each line of
clothing was tailored after an aspect of preparatory
school life. Fittingly branded with an imperfect
silk screen-printed “A&F” team logo or insignia
similar to a boarding school or Ivy League crest
these shirts carried with them a sense of wear and
ownership. Providing an affective ruse of a “handme-down” or a family relic, Abercrombie & Fitch’s
new designs conjured a history more personal and
sentimental than its mass-produced origin.
Using the descriptor “vintage” an association to the authenticity became a strong element
to continue Abercrombie & Fitch’s tradition of
distinction in a similar way British fabrics were
purveyed in its earlier ads. Each sequence enacts
flashes of a private affair that conveys commonsense displays of youthful exuberance and leisure.
For a genuine effect, nude bodies set against open,
outdoor space draw on a symbolic order of authenticity attached to nature (figure 6). Two topless
models, a man and woman, frolic in arcane waters.
Viewers witness a muscular and toned man as he
grabs a slender woman by her waist and pulls her
into the water. Here the slight detail of an A&F
g-string locates the Abercrombie character, her
hair and facial expression indicate this sudden occurrence may have caught her off-guard, her arms
stretch to brace herself. The man pulling her smiles
as his arms clutch and direct her destination. This
veritable performance of freedom and power uses
sprightly bodies to accentuate and confirm genderbased expectations of virility that bear entitlement
over the effeminate.
In figure 4 we a see a man sporting a white
shirt, tie, and sweater; the disheveled collar of
his shirt, along with the stretched neckline of his
sweater, provide the viewer with cues of history
and functional wear. This is a model sporting a
new line of clothing offered through Abercrombie
and Fitch’s Winter 1999 edition of A&F Quarterly,
a magazine catalog hybrid used to promote the Abercrombie ideal. Instead of highlighting the clothing’s newness with crisp photography and a fullfigured display, this image instead projects an aura
of embodiment through a softer more personal image. The model addresses the viewer unassumingly
as the plaid interior of his jacket encodes cues of
ethnic lineage upon which viewers may reminisce.
Nothing stands out; each article of clothing is symbolically ordered to hint a lifestyle and personality of the body it covers. The physical attributes
of this model—brown hair, reddish and primrose
skin—offer a depiction of European physiognomy
while his slightly disordered clothes convey details
of British fabric and preppy attire. In this image
style and persona are offered as fantastical alternatives; legible and systematic meaning is diffused for
its determined placement within a larger social order. Unnoticeable is how this advertisement image
seamlessly expands the idea of a preppy look beyond its own governance. Such a depiction creates
a casual look of luxury—one that is displaced for
consumers who cared about quality, but were unready for a refined dressed code. Similar to imagery
from earlier-century campaigns, the simple nature
of this advertisement image also creates an illusion.
A fantastical alternative is offered to consumers as
casual luxury.
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It is in this alternative space the “cool kids”
are those who are conservatively dressed and outfitted with enough cultural capital to fit in wherever. However, like all forms of expression the
systems that allow them meaning also carry historical determinations. In a gesture, a marginalized exterior remains. Illustrated in the following
scene, an A&F character demonstrates his chops
as he dances during a visit to Harlem’s famous
Lennox Lounge jazz club (figure 7). In this particular context, social hierarchies of gender, race,
class, and their relative positions amplify this visual narrative, as an A&F model is located at its
center, and whereby the viewer witnesses a subtle
act of objectification bound by consent as the man
dancing grinds against the woman. Are these two
dirty dancing? What appears to be two characters
equally engaged is rather equivocal—for only one
character has an identity and is thus privileged for
his distinction.
The viewer reads his alabaster skin, Oxford
shirt, jean pants, and sport coat, distinguishes
and knows who the Abercrombie kid is, while the
other figure, the woman, remains undetermined.
This social hierarchy begins to resound the significance of property and provenance in structural
inequities, but is this a depiction of claiming, as
the viewer discerns the Abercrombie kid, biting his
lip, and concentrating on the darker-toned woman
in front of him? Looking through previous photos
and the implicit dynamics of power within this
image, expressions of social mobility, and edification (along with an exhibited privilege to pass) are
all being incorporated within the Abercrombie &
Fitch ideal. Nonetheless, the modern crusader and
frontiersman have returned in the form of a cosmopolitan traveler.
For the working-class consumer, cosmopolitanism is exemplary of upper-class privilege and
power. Imitating and appropriating these characteristics is often seen as mode of access, regardless
of lineage. Despite its contradiction, having an
opportunity to buy mass-market goods that evoke
privilege allows working-class consumers a fantastical alternative wherein their taste and claim of
style is allowed to reject any connection to their
economic disposition. Stuart Ewen states:
[T]he emergence of a consumer society,
filled with mass-produced status symbols, in which judgment about a person
is not based on what one does within society, but rather upon what one has. Such
an understanding of class has moved
away from the conception rooted in the
social relations of power, and toward a
notion based, for the most part, on income and credit. Middle class status was
becoming something founded purely on
one’s ability to purchase, construct, and
present a viable social self. While this
modern idea of class invested more and
more people with iconography of status,
it also tended to mask the relations of
power that prevailed within society.15
While on one hand upper-class characteristics
stood as an opposite to working-class consumers,
the association to lifestyle offered them a step away
from the behavior of poverty through a new sense
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figure 7: A&F Quarterly,
Fall (2000)
177
of worth, expressed by cachet, cues, and social artifacts. Abercrombie & Fitch has banked on this
effect. However, for the non-European subject or
gender nonconforming subject donning the preppie identity, the extent of such a claim is limited by
the engagement of the others to see them as such.
What Stuart Hall describes as a psychic and imaginary engagement, made with an investment in the
image or involvement in what the image is saying
or doing.16 This is an abstract disposition for all
persons making an identity or lifestyle claim; what
is intended to be projected the intended projection
is not necessarily what is read and identified.
Transcendence from gender, class, racial, and
ethnic conventions is not only provided under
the pretense of self-producing, but also is dependent upon larger structures of individualism that
obscure privileges based on cosmetic traits, such
as skin, nose, hair, and lips. Each bound to such
ideological associations as race and gender. This
arrangement—wrought with anxiety and paradoxes—serves to bring about social identities signified
by clothing yet misrecognized as the lineage of the
donning subjects.
Before industrial expansion in the midtwentieth-century working-class consumers were
victims of a culture that maintained a marginalized exterior. It was a time when all persons knew
their place in the world. This was made possible
through cultural projects, such as eugenics, natural
history, and public relations where the citizenry
was cultivated to believe their economic disposition were characteristic of a higher order of nature.
Concurrently, new strategies mediating public
opinion became highly influential in other areas
of business practice.17 This significantly altered
clinical studies and practices of persuasion, and it
was through this new vein that marketing research
and advertising evolved into highly penetrating
mechanisms by which identification and desire are
authored. Advertising continues to play a role in
the way consumers express themselves by way of
social artifacts. By activating identification, image
and display campaigns offer visual elements that
can create meaning for the viewing subject.
For Abercrombie & Fitch, a nostalgic style
and vintage taste are themes used to connect consumers to a potential claim of distinction: being
or aspiring to be a part of a particular social group
that dresses a certain way and carries itself a particular way. In this case the value of the vintage
look and casual luxury is indicative of a stamp of
standardization or normality. For working-class
consumers, gendered, raced, and ethnic minorities, fashion and style can facilitate an acceptance
of difference as well as the opportunity to participate in social groups that designate meaning to the
Abercrombie ideal. This ideal, marked as a style of
dress and manner of being, offers itself as a social
badge built off an informal cachet that allows consumers to project their membership to a lifestyle,
association, or activities not weighted by class,
gender, or race. José Esteban Muñoz in his theory
of disidentification suggests that marginalized subjects can transfigure dominant ideologies into their
own versions by “shuffling back and forth between
reception and production.”18 He writes, “[it] is
about expanding and problematizing identity and
identification, not abandoning any socially prescribed identity component.”19 The Abercrombie
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& Fitch ideal offers consumers the opportunity to
look the part, while being not quite conventional.
In my experience with the A&F brand I have often shifted from marginalized to conventional and
back again. Perhaps in contrast to the Abercrombie & Fitch ideal its mass-produced vintage look
denies any novelty of uniqueness or handcrafted
distinction? According to Muñoz’s theory this superficial paradox would offer a marginalized subject room to embrace dominant cultural values as
a strategy to subvert and expand meaning in an
identity claim.20 While mimicry fares to be promising, it is not always successful given that meanings such as sex, gender, and race are understood
socially as biological facts offering little room to
transcend corporeal delineations. Nevertheless
the ability to generate access to social groups by
performing identifiable characteristics provides an
ambivalent case for acceptance. Constantly shifting, oscillating, and confirming historical practices
of distinction and differentiation, visual formations carry an evocative power that is constituted
through the shared conventions of a social group.
In other words, the transient nature of status suggests that meaning and its relation to identification
is primarily a matter of engagement.
179
NOTES
1. In response to Latino, African American, Asian
American and women employees and applicants
who charged the company with discrimination,
Abercrombie & Fitch’s defense team maintained
a disavowal of any form of systematic discrimination, yet agreed to settle out of court, to end litigation. As a result a $40-million dollar settlement
was made. In addition Abercrombie & Fitch agreed
to a consent decree to implement over a six-year
period.
2. Alex Wipperfurth, Brand Hijack: Marketing without Marketing, (New York: Penguin Group, 2005).
3. Kenneth W. Warren,“Appeals for (Mis)recognition:
Theorizing the Diaspora,” Cultures of United States
Imperialism, eds. Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease,
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 400.
4. Stuart Ewen, All Consuming Images: The Politics
of Style in Contemporary Culture, Revised, (Basic
Books, 1988), 49; Gordon J. Lippincott, Design
For Business, (Chicago, 1947).
5. Ewen.
6. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender
and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, (London:
Routlege, 1995), 4.
7. Abercrombie & Fitch ad in the New York Times August 6, 1918.
8. Ibid.
9. “Abercrombie & Fitch Company,” Contemporary
Fashion, 2nd Edition, editor Taryn Benbow-Pfalzgraf, (Farmington Hills: St. James Press, 2002), 3.
10. Stuart Ewen, All Consuming Images: The Politics
of Style in Contemporary Culture, Revised, (Basic
Books, 1988), 68.
11. Paris, Ellen, “Endangered Species?” Forbes, no.
139, March 9, 1987, pp. 136–137.
12. “Abercrombie & Fitch Company,” Contemporary
Fashion, 2nd Edition, editor Taryn Benbow-Pfalzgraf, (Farmington Hills: St. James Press, 2002), 4.
13. Willow Bay, “Profile of Leslie Wexner,” Pinnacle,
Video transcript (Cable News Network, 2002):
(accessed 20 July 2006).
14. Lisa Birnbach, The Preppy Handbook, (Workman
Publishing Company, 1980), 48.
15. Stuart Ewen, All Consuming Images: The Politics
of Style in Contemporary Culture, Revised, (Basic
Books, 1988), 68.
16. Stuart Hall, Representation and Media, transcript,
(Northampton: Media Education Foundation,
1997).
17. Ewen, xxxvi.
18. José Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and
the Performance of Politics, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 25.
19. Ibid., 29.
20. Ibid., 5.