Look who’s in trouble again. Those two merry pranksters, Abercrombie and Fitch, have gotten everybody riled up.
You know, that same pair that put out the near-porn catalog a few years ago. This time, the trouble stems from something said by their outrageous chief executive, Mike Jeffries.
(In their defense, both Abercrombie and Fitch are long gone. In The Gilded Age, they were two wealthy outdoorsmen who celebrated the Teddy Roosevelt hunting and fishing lifestyle – at a time when nobody knew about washboard abs or Brazilian butt lifts.)
I’ve heard that Jeffries is an incredible control freak who micromanages as minutely as how many buttons on a shirt are left unbuttoned, on a shirt form in every mall store in America. In other words, there’s not much accidental about what he does – or says. So I’m thinking maybe it wasn’t careless of him back in 2006 to tell Salon.com, defending his choice not to sell plus sizes, “We go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny.”
Of course, those cool kids – AKA, the A&F constituency – loved it. But educators, parents, journalists, feminists, sociologists, activists and clergy didn’t love it quite so much and have said so, loudly and publicly.
And I’m guessing Jeffries is sitting in his cool kids’ pad in Columbus, Ohio, enjoying all the attention. Because a few years ago, when his catalogs stirred up all that conversation, sales skyrocketed. Even into the recession, when everybody else flat-lined, A&F could be counted on for double-digit same-store sales gains, quarter after quarter.
Ah, but this time there’s a difference. Sales fell 17 percent in the first quarter of 2013 and future profit forecasts have been cut. The one group Jeffries didn’t want to enrage lives on Wall Street – and they’re not smiling.
So now Jeffries is on the apology tour. He said he “seriously regrets” that his “choice of words was interpreted in a manner that has caused offense.”
The standard PR-issued “apology.” It wasn’t his fault, it was the fault of everyone who misinterpreted his words. But yeah, okay, sorry . . .
The 68-year-old Jeffries has also been criticized for his dyed blond hair and the Joan Rivers-like contours of his face. Apparently, he yearns to be the poster boy for his Abercrombie & Fitch brand in more ways than one.
As Joan herself would probably say, “Oh, grow up!”