The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch: The Rise

Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) is a well-known clothing brand that has been around since 1892 (yes, that ‘8’ is correct). Striking marketing and specific advertising expressions lifted the brand from a dull (and bankrupt) company to a global brand with flagship stores in places such as the Champs Elysées and Fifth Avenue. But risen high, fallen low. A&F’s image was long based on beautifully built young men and was mainly a success among gay consumers. How did this come about and what happened?

Successful crossover

Marketing the Rainbow is, among other things, about reaching the gay (or LGBT) consumer. Sometimes gays are even used as role models to open up a market: ‘They are trendy, so if they buy it it must be hip.’ In this way, for example, Absolut vodka conquered the US. Something similar happened with A&F.

The company was founded in 1892 in New York, as an elite supplier of sporting and excursion equipment. That lasted almost a century, but in 1976 bankruptcy was filed (‘Chapter 11’). The name was revived two years later when Oshman’s Sporting Goods purchased the brand. Oshman’s launched A&F as a mail-order company specializing in hunting clothing and novelties. In 1988 they sold the activities to The Limited, owner of Victoria’s Secret, among others. This repositioned A&F as an aspirational lifestyle brand for ‘Casual Luxury’, a new term that was also registered as such.

The catalog mainly showed beautifully muscular, half-naked men, and in this way the brand was discovered by gays. I was often in the US, and there wasn’t a single self-respecting gay person who didn’t wear something from A&F at least 3 times a week. It was an identifying symbol, just as the logos of Lacoste and Robe di Kappa marked a generation in the 1970s – only for now it was (almost) exclusively reserved for gays for a long time.

So this was a crossover from a conservative, stuffy market to the trendy gay consumers – that was unique. Later the opposite happened, and that was also special, although not unique.

Beefcake

With non-stop photos of beefcake, often in black and white and taken by top photographer Bruce Weber, A&F quickly conquered the gay community. Only later were straight men added – mainly students. Girls also bought the clothes for their boyfriends because they wanted to see them as the handsome and hip hunk shown to them in the commercials.

The company’s early print ads feature young men running around campus, pulling down each other’s boxer shorts, intimate poses on the couch, and completely nude men on the beach, even without any branded products in the picture (or would that be those towels?).

Although their ads also appeared in the OUT magazine over the years, A&F spokesman Hampton Carney said the company was not targeting the gay market. “We are mainly targeting 18-22 year old students,” he said. The company has never worried that its advertising came across as too gay, Carney said. He added: ‘It’s almost a disgrace that it’s being labeled as homoerotic.’

But with photos like this it’s hard to believe that ‘the homosexual consumer’ has not been taken into account. Two naked ‘cuddling’ teenagers in an advertisement were explained as ‘twins’. Cuddling girls weren’t even ‘explained’.

Lesbian Marriage (2000)

The most gay-specific advertisement Abercrombie ever made was an image from the Winter 2000 issue of A&F Quarterly, depicting the Emerson family’s double wedding. One of the two couples consisted of two ladies, which only became legal in the US 15 years later. Ironically, the responses on the RSVP card were, “No… I’m a liberal, but not that liberal” and “Yes… I’d like to see two women get married.”

For a number of years, the successful quarterly ‘magalogues’ and ongoing advertising campaigns were created by Bruce Weber and Sam Shahid, creative director of Shahid & Co., New York.

Openly gay Shahid said Abercrombie has never worried about its work coming across as too gay. But like A&F, he’s uncomfortable talking about the ad in terms of its appeal to the gay market. He focuses on its universal appeal, noting that heterosexuals like the ad as much as gays.

Gay vague

The advertisements for A&F, with unusual expressions of male physical interaction, also come across to many as ‘gay vague’. Shahid describes such model interactions as uncoached and their physical antics are usually spontaneous. “There’s a freedom there, they have no problem touching each other. We as adults have a problem when we look at it and read things into it.’

In 2012, they took an extra step by showing a kiss between two shirtless hunks in the shower. The steamy clip, shot by Weber, shows a number of male models wrestling each other in the shower before the smooch, which is actually quite tame compared to some of the more provocative poses the men struck in the video.

The video had the caption “Other sports require one ball, wrestling requires two,” and was one of four wrestling “Webersodes” found on Weber’s official website. The men in the videos sometimes wear A&F clothing, but these do not play a prominent role. An A&F spokesperson said the four videos were not part of an official advertising campaign, despite Weber’s Facebook page identifying them differently.

In 1999 they already had a video called ‘Wrestling‘, in which sweaty men fought each other, but back then it was all a bit more macho.

Softcore ‘magalogue’

Yet sources like Brandweek noted, “Abercrombie & Fitch kept a straight face for years while publishing a quarterly magazine for gay softcore.”

The magalogue has caused A&F some trouble due to the occasional male nudity (an age disclaimer was added to the magalogue in 1998). It was also the magalogue that created a large gay following: a ‘brochure’ full of hunks and interesting men could easily win over many gays. This led to A&F items being worn at gay social events, further spreading its popularity.

Many gays were angry when a New York magazine article about the American version of the controversial British hit series “Queer As Folk” pointed out that the A&F would not allow product placements on the show. Their explanation was that they never “lent out products for this purpose” – but the series was not allowed to show them without payment either.

Pride

At a later stage they were more open with their support for the LGBT community. Since 2010, A&F has been working with The Trevor Project, a helpline for LGBT people specifically focused on suicide prevention. In those 13 years, they have donated approximately $4 million.

A Pride collection has also been released annually since 2018. This was preceded by a blunder in 2017. One tweet stated: ‘The Pride community is everybody, not just LGBTQ people’, which sounded like ‘why is there no Straight Pride?’. There were strong reactions, the tweet was hastily deleted, and they did better the following year.