Monday, April 16, 2007

Why I hate Abercrombie & Fitch

I read the article “Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch” by Dwight James. The article is basically self explanatory by the title; the author does like the clothing company Abercrombie & Fitch. He believes that the Abercrombie company does not represent the all American image it self proclaimed to have.
Abercrombie & Fitch is clothing company that started off as something completely different kind of a company. In they year of 1913 the company expanded its inventory to include sports wear clothing. It was also the first company to supply such clothing to both men and women. Abercrombie has outfitted everyone including all types of famous clientele even Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and John F. Kennedy. The clothing company went through hard times and even filed for bankruptcy. They now have been under the same management since 1992 under Michael Jeffries. The company is well known for having controversial ad campaigns causing a problem with their extremely over sexed pictures during their marketing campaigns. They also are known for celebrating their whiteness. The company says they are the classic all American look, but many often find that in their ads and magazines that look does not include African American people, Chinese, Mexican or Latino cultures. The pictures of diversity models aren’t included on the front page of the site, but rather under a small link at the bottom of the page entitled diversity. Dwight McBride was outraged that people of color were not represented in any of the ads and basically in an unspoken way are told that the clothing is not for them.
My question is why are minorities excluded from buying Abercrombie & Fitch?
The people at Abercrombie say they do not exclude from selling to consumers of color. They have also covered themselves by making their diversity page. But in reality they are still racist and that is a problem. I don’t agree with Dwight McBride however, because he is coming from a point of view that highly disagrees with and to me is morally incorrect.

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