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Today, Explained
How Abercrombie made a comeback
00:24:52
Fast Company’s senior fashion writer Elizabeth Segran explains how the company overcame a problematic history to pull off a renaissance in this rebroadcast of our episode from July.
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- [00:05]
Noelle King
Summer of 1999, Britney had her first hit, TLC had their millionth, American Pie was in theaters. Carson Daly was on trl, and the cool kids wore Abercrombie and Fitch. Abercrombie didn't invent the American Teenager. Hollywood did that.
- [00:22]
Elizabeth Segrin
You're tearing me apart.
- [00:25]
Noelle King
But for a time, it defined what it meant to dress and act like a teenager.
- [00:29]
Elizabeth Segrin
Look at him. It's like Abercrombie's making people.
- [00:32]
Noelle King
But then the brand cratered, done in by the cheap shots it took at women, Asians, West Virginia and male gymnasts, among others. And a CEO who was recently charged with running a sex trafficking ring. But quietly, Abercrombie has been mounting an incredible comeback. You might even find yourself in one this Black Friday. And you will not be alone. Coming up on TODAY Explained. Support for TODAY Explained comes from Expedia. Expedia believes everybody should have somewhere to look forward to. That's the idea behind Unpack 2025, a report on next year's travel trends from Expedia Hotels.com and VRBO. Maybe you're looking for a destination that's off the beaten path. Maybe you're looking for a hotel with an award winning restaurant or a vacation rental. No matter what kind of travel you are, you can find inspiration with Unpacked25. Explore more travel trends and book your somewhere to look forward to@expedia.com unpacked25 yes.
- [01:32]
Elizabeth Segrin
Hi, I'd like to order a pizza. Oh, hey, can I ask you a question?
- [01:36]
Abercrombie Representative
Is the cute blonde guy delivering tonight?
- [01:38]
Elizabeth Segrin
Very Abercrombie and Fitch.
- [01:40]
Noelle King
I'm Noelle King with Elizabeth Segrin. She's a senior staff writer at Fast Company. She writes about the fashion industry and Elizabeth's early memories of Abercrombie.
- [01:50]
Elizabeth Segrin
Okay, so I did not grow up in this country because my dad worked for an airline. I spent most of my childhood in Europe and Asia. And so my first experience even hearing about Abercrombie and fitness came in 1999 when I was a junior in high school.
- [02:07]
LFO
I like it when the girls stop by.
- [02:09]
Elizabeth Segrin
It was called Summer Girls by lfo. It was such an iconic song. And the refrain of that song, as many people will remember, is I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch.
- [02:23]
LFO
I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch. I take her if I have one wish. She's been gone since that summer.
- [02:30]
Elizabeth Segrin
And so the thing that went off in my little, you know, teenage girl brain was like, what is this brand that makes men swoon when girls just wear It. Right. And then when I watched the music video, you know, almost all of the models in it were white. So I think I was getting my first taste of Abercrombie and Fitch from that song.
- [02:52]
Noelle King
You were indeed. When did you experience Abercrombie in the flesh?
- [02:56]
Elizabeth Segrin
So then I came to the US for college, and so I decided to go to a mall and check it out for myself.
- [03:04]
LFO
Welcome to Abercrombie, Fitch.
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Elizabeth Segrin
Can we take your order? So this was probably around 2001, 2002, and this was, I think, at the period where Abercrombie was still very powerful in American culture. And so I stepped into this store, and let me tell you, the first thing that happened was I was hit in the face with this overwhelming musky cologne. And I was just like, how are they even pumping this stuff out? Like, I didn't know where it was coming from, but everything smelt of this musk. And then the next thing that I noticed was that all over the walls, there was this black and white imagery of these models. And they were predominantly men, and they were most of them not wearing shirts, which struck me as odd because this was clothing store and yet all the models were naked. But I think, you know, the main thing that I experienced when I was in the store was that, you know, all of the staff members there were predominantly white. They were all, you know, very, very beautiful and very physically fit, and they just did not seem very interested in serving customers there. They were sort of like off in the corner, and if you needed any help, you needed to go and, like, talk to these people who were obviously way cooler than you. So, you know, as a. As a marketing strategy, I don't know, like, how that worked, really. But I determined from that one visit that Abercrombie and Fitch was really not my scene.
- [04:31]
Noelle King
You sought Abercrombie out, and that was kind of a weird thing to do, but actually, it was not that weird because it was so huge. I can totally see why you were like, I want to see this thing in the flesh.
- [04:42]
Elizabeth Segrin
Yeah, well, you know, eventually, you know, after that period, I became a fashion journalist. So over the last 10 years, I've done many stories about Abercrombie and Fitch, and I find it a absolutely fascinating company. I don't know whether everybody knows this, but it was originally founded 130 years ago, and it was one of the original American clothing brands. It created mostly outdoor clothing that was sold by catalog, and it has dressed everyone from Amelia Earhart to Teddy Roosevelt. Right. And so it's this very Old iconic brand. But over the decades, you know, after it was founded, you know, it ran into hard times.
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News Reporter
Long traffic lines created a virtual parking lot here in Bell Harbor. It's not because the exclusive shops here are giving away anything free. Just Abercrombie and Fitch going out of business.
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Elizabeth Segrin
By the time we enter the current era, it was really struggling financially. So in 1988, the brand was acquired by the Limited, which you might know because it also owns Victoria's Secret and Express. And it was in the late 80s and early 90s that it went through this incredible transformation from this heritage American brand into what we now know as this, you know, teen, hyper sexualized, kind of racist brand. And really the mastermind behind this strategy was this man, Michael Jeffries, who became the CEO in 1992, and he's the one who transformed the company into this massive hit. CEO Mike Jeffries used sex appeal to win them over. I hope Abercrombie feels very Sexy for a 20 year old. Mike Jeffries told Salon magazine at one point. In every school there are cool and popular kids, and then there are the not so cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. So he was going after, you know, physically fit, athletic kids, largely white, and he clothed them in traditional, classic American preppy clothing. And so he was drawing from the catalog of American aesthetics. So we're talking about oxford shirts with popped collars and cotton T shirts and denim and khakis. But what he did was he took it to a new level as far as how sexualized these garments were. So everything was extremely tight, very low fitting, lots of midriff exposure.
- [07:24]
Noelle King
And there were lots of brands. I mean, over time there have been lots of brands that are exclusive. That is part of the marketing. It's what gets non cool people to buy in that this is what they should be wearing. Not all of those brands, though, go through the absolute Roman empire of a fall that Abercrombie went through. Walk us through some of the scandals and missteps, the newsmaking moments.
- [07:48]
Elizabeth Segrin
Yeah, I agree. I think the exclusionary point of view is what sells, right? I mean, that's what sells in retail. But I think what went wrong with Abercrombie is that they were just so naked, nakedly in pursuit of this kind of vision of exclusion. For one thing, they were extremely racist. I mean, let's just put it plainly, right? I mean, this was a very racist brand. My favorite example of how racist they were was that in 2002 they released this T shirt that featured two Chinese men on it with very offensively slanted eyes. And it was designed to look like a shirt from a laundromat. And the slogan on it was, two Wongs can make it white. I just want to know, like, what was the process of making, like, who was in the room when they made this? Like, did they just. Did they just think, like, oh, okay, this is kind of a funny pun. Like, let's just go with it, Right? Or was there anybody there who was, like, rolling their eyes? I don't think so. I think that they had hired, you know, a team of executives that didn't have the ability to understand exactly how egregious that was. And, you know, in 2003, the brand faced a class action lawsuit where all of these plaintiffs argued that Abercrombie did not hire black, Asian and Latino people in stores. So I was totally onto that. Hold up, shorties. Each photo costs 10 bucks, and the proceeds go to charity. Oh, what charity is that? It's to pay for the $40 million lawsuit against us. Yeah, a bunch of minorities sued Abercrombie because they only hire foxy white guys like us. If they were hired, they were forced to work in back rooms where they wouldn't be seen by customers. And, you know, all the way until 20, there was a woman who took Abercrombie to court saying that the brand didn't hire her because she wore a hijab. Abercrombie told her they had a quote, look policy, no headscarves, allowed her lawyer reading a statement on her behalf. Observance of my faith should not prevent me from getting a job. And that case went all the way to the Supreme Court, and Abercrombie lost. Justice Scalia has our opinion this morning in case 1486, EEOC versus Abercrombie and Fitch.
- [10:03]
Noelle King
This is really easy.
- [10:05]
Elizabeth Segrin
And so I think the brand was just so overtly, nakedly offensive that the brand slowly offended people into irrelevance.
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Noelle King
This is. I mean, this is a preppy clothing brand that literally lost a Supreme Court case against it. How bad was that? The low point? How bad did it get for Abercrombie?
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Elizabeth Segrin
Yeah, I mean, I think that was the low point. You know, this coincided with financial problems. So Starting in about 2008, during the Great Recession, Abercrombie's revenues began to go into a tailspin. But that was actually true of many retailers at the time. You know, the Great Recession was terrible for fashion brands. But what was different about Abercrombie is that it never bounced back during that period. Of the Great Recession. I think consumers realized that this was not a brand that they wanted to come back to. And by 2012 its stock price was like absolutely in the toilet. And you know, in 2016 it was voted the most hated retailer. Like, I don't think that you can come back from that. I think that what was going on during this period is that, you know, actually culture was changing. The brand in the 1990s was really playing into this. Note that exclusion was a good thing, that you wanted to be at the top of this social hierarchy. But over the last couple of decades, culture has changed. American culture has changed for the better, in my opinion. Young people today don't want to live in an exclusionary world. They want to live in a place where everybody's accepted. And this includes people of color, people of different religions, people of all kinds of body types. And this brand was just totally out of sync with the moment that we're in now.
- [11:57]
Noelle King
Elizabeth Seagren Fast Company Coming up, the Abercromback, the Abercrombasance.
- [12:03]
Elizabeth Segrin
Do you have one that's so good? Maybe if they had used that it would have come back faster.
- [12:29]
Noelle King
Support for Today Explained comes from Expedia. Heading into 2025, chances are you have somewhere to look forward to. Maybe it's a vacation far away, a continent you've never been to, a weekend trip, someplace close to home. Just a little time away from the everyday. No matter where you're going, if travel is in the cards for you, you can use Unpacked 2025 to get inspired for your next vacation. This is report from Expedia Hotels.com and VRBO and it outlines plenty of interesting vacation trends that speak to all kinds of travelers. For example, you can read about the all inclusive era. If you don't consider yourself an all inclusive type of person, there's a chance that could change because those all inclusive hotels are evolving and you might be surprised at what they now offer. Or you can explore one Click Trips and Book a Travel influencers stay right from their feed through Expedia's travel shops you can see all the new travel trends and book you are somewhere to look forward to@expedia.com unpack25.
- [13:29]
Elizabeth Segrin
What do you think the vibe of the new Abercrombie is? Like? Who are they trying to talk to? What is the like sort of thing they're trying to put across?
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Fashion Expert
They're still targeting young generation but not as good as they did before. Like they're not smelling as good as they used to. The shoppers were Attractive. To be very honest, I used to collect them as a teenager, but they're just basic now.
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Noelle King
So I feel that you're the only person that I've talked to who, like, misses the smell of Abercrombie.
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Fashion Expert
Yeah, definitely. It was so much. It was a different vibe. It was a different experience. I wanted to be in store for longer because it smelled good.
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Noelle King
But it's just basic now, so it's today explained. Back with Elizabeth Seagran, senior writer at Fast Company. All right, so, Elizabeth, you have been a fashion writer for a long time. When did you start to suspect that Abercrombie and Fitch was trying to turn things around?
- [14:16]
Elizabeth Segrin
So it was a very distinct moment in 2019, which is five years ago now. And, you know, I'm a fashion writer. You know, I've been a fashion writer for a long time. And so I, you know, I in touch with lots of different brands because I need to do stories about them. And I had not heard from Abercrombie for the previous, like, five to 10 years. But in 2019, I started getting emails from them about changes that were happening at the company. And indeed, they had brought on an entirely new executive team with a new CEO and a new CMO and a new design team.
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Abercrombie Representative
We did it. You know, no one thought, particularly with the Abercrombie brand, that it was possible. And our favorite thing to say right now is, we're back.
- [14:57]
Elizabeth Segrin
So my interest was piqued, and I wanted to know whether it was really possible for this brand to bounce back after it had just tanked. The first thing I noticed was that the brand was very different aesthetically. For one thing, everybody was dressed in the ads, which, you know, was a big change for them. And. And there was also this cast of diverse models. I mean, it kind of reminded me of ads from the United Colors of Benetton.
- [15:33]
Noelle King
Be right, be wrong, be anything, Be.
- [15:36]
Elizabeth Segrin
Yourself, be in love, be humble, be brave, happy. But I think another very clear move that they were making is that rather than targeting teenagers, which had been their strategy for the previous two decades, they were very focused on targeting people in their early 20s. And I think this was a really clever strategy. I mean, for one thing, there are actually not that many brands that are targeting this particular demographic. There are still teen brands out there, and there are lots of brands that are targeting people with a little bit more money in their late 20s, early 30s. But this was sort of an untapped part of the market. But it was also smart in the sense that these were millennials still, right People in their early 20s and they had vague memories of what this brand was a long time ago, but they hadn't followed it very closely. So it's a brand name that still carried some cachet. But, you know, it was an entirely new generation that could explore this brand for the very first time.
- [16:40]
Consumer
I think it was like my older cousins, they're like maybe 10 years older than me, and I always saw them wearing Abercrombie. So I think since I was a kid, I've always known, but it changed a lot over the years.
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Noelle King
The preppy stuff that I remember was very cute for high school, but I don't know that I would want to wear like that, like, tennis pleat skirt into my first job. What does it look like now?
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Elizabeth Segrin
Well, that skirt would have been way too short and inappropriate for the workplace. You're absolutely right. But that's the other really fascinating thing. They totally revamped the design of the products.
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Abercrombie Representative
We like to say at Abercrombie today, it's about belonging. In the past, it was about fitting in. And there's a very big difference to those two things. So we have really been able to make a very inclusive and diverse associate base, consumer base, product base. We've extended our sales.
- [17:31]
Elizabeth Segrin
It's much less fashion focused and also a lot less preppy. And it's mostly about sleek, minimalist pieces, kind of like essentials that you would use day in and day out. And they're very thoughtful about the use cases for these people who are just starting their lives right. So there are pieces in their collections now that are great for your first job. Like, so there's even, you know, suits and things like that. But there are lots of pieces for things like going to weddings because people might be starting to get married.
- [18:02]
Abercrombie Representative
The consumer told us, you know what, weddings are no longer a day. They're two, three, four day weekends. We need lots of things to wear throughout all of those different occasions and.
- [18:11]
Elizabeth Segrin
Lots of things that are just like sort of casual for every day. And there's also been a big focus on denim, which is also another very clever strategy because jeans have been the mainstay for many successful brands, including Madewell and Gap in its heyday. And so they've been very focused on creating very well fitting jeans.
- [18:33]
Curvy Girl
You guys, if you are a curvier girl like me and you have a hard time finding jeans, I just made the discovery of the century.
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Elizabeth Segrin
And actually there's a lot of discussion online about actually, like, these jeans fit really, really well.
- [18:48]
Curvy Girl
This is not sponsored also. I just have such a hard time finding pants that fit me that when I put these on, I almost started crying because it's like this never happens.
- [18:58]
Elizabeth Segrin
And importantly, the sizes now go up to size 32, which in the previous iteration of Abercrombie, they only went up to size 10, which actually is just, like, mind blowing when you think about the American population. Like, how few people could actually F into those clothes. So now it's much more size inclusive. And, you know, from my discussions with their design team, there is a lot of focus on the quality of the materials. They're using a lot of higher end materials like wool and cotton and cashmere. And there's also been a lot of focus on fit. And this is all really important because this is all happening in the context of fast fashion. And the fast fashion world is, you know, it's famously about making clothes as cheap as possible and making them so trendy that you can throw them out after a few wears. This is very distinctly going against all of that.
- [19:56]
Noelle King
I only recently started seeing stories about Abercrombie being back. I didn't see, like, a big relaunch. It's not coming up in, you know, my ads on Hulu. How did they get the word out?
- [20:07]
Elizabeth Segrin
This was also extremely interesting to me because they clearly had invested a lot of money in this turnaround, but they chose not to come out big. Instead, what they did was they worked with a lot of influencers on social media.
- [20:23]
Curvy Girl
I am an Abercrombie girly, okay?
- [20:25]
Elizabeth Segrin
And I know the absolute chokehold that.
- [20:27]
Noelle King
Abercrombie trousers have on me is ridiculous.
- [20:31]
Elizabeth Segrin
I'm just gonna say, I don't care what anybody says. Abercrombie is elite when it comes to fall fashion. And they started launching stores on shopping streets that had a different look. And they were very quiet about this relaunch and they were just really hoping that it would spread by word of mouth. I think coming back quietly was a really good strategy because it meant that people weren't thinking that critically about this brand. You know, they were just kind of stumbling into it when they saw, you know, an influencer wear a really nice outfit or stepping into the store and then kind of discovering for themselves what this brand was in this moment.
- [21:11]
Noelle King
And how well is it working?
- [21:13]
Elizabeth Segrin
It is working remarkably well. I mean, this. This has been, like, one of the most interesting success stories in retail. So, you know, listen to this. Last year, it was the best performing stock on the S and P index. It beat out Nvidia.
- [21:32]
Noelle King
No.
- [21:33]
Elizabeth Segrin
And so it gained 285% so that, that's number one pretty remarkable. It generated 4 billion in revenue in the previous financial year with a 10% year over year growth. So it's doing gangbusters, right? And when I spoke to them, they said that they're really trying to hit that 5 billion revenue target. And so they're totally on track to doing that. I mean, it's just remarkable.
- [22:04]
Noelle King
It is remarkable. And it makes me wonder whether there is a takeaway here for other brands that might be struggling.
- [22:12]
Elizabeth Segrin
I think this is a really encouraging story for all of the heritage large retailers that dot the American retail landscape. You know, it's been a hard couple of years for a lot of different retail brands, especially, you know, when direct to consumer brands like Everlane and Reformation have popped up, you know, and they've had to compete with these new brands. So big brands like J. Crew and Gap have had a difficult time. But I think the Abercrombie story shows us that if a brand has this long history and a place in American retail history, it can come back. But you have to be really smart about it and you have to be focused, I think, on separating yourself from other brands on the market, just like Abercrombie has by targeting this early 20s audience, but also really focus on quality. Because I think consumers, they're very perceptive and they want good quality product. And I think Abercrombie did both of these things. And I mean, look at how well it's doing.
- [23:24]
Noelle King
As a teenager you heard a line in a song that was compelling enough to make you go in to a store when you hit the US and then you grew up and you became a fashion writer. Do you owe it all to Abercrombie and Fitch or perhaps perhaps to lfo?
- [23:43]
Elizabeth Segrin
Oh my gosh. I have to rethink my whole life now. I need to talk about this with my therapist, to be honest, to work through all of what this means for me.
- [23:53]
Noelle King
What is LFO'd?
- [23:56]
LFO
I like it when the girls stop by in the summer.
- [24:02]
Noelle King
Elizabeth S. Is a writer at Fast Company. Today's show was produced by Amanda Llewellyn. She had help from Peter Balan Rosen. Amina El Saadi was our editor. Matthew Collette Fact checked. And Patrick Boyd and Andrea Christen's daughter engineer. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Expedia. Expedia believes not every vacation is created equal. Some are meant to spur curiosity. Some are meant for relaxation. Some are a mix of both. If you're looking for inspiration for your next vacation. You can check out Unpacked 2025, an annual report on the trends in Travel from Expedia Hotels.com and VRBO. In 2025, Expedia thinks you should check out Fukuoka, it's the friendliest city in Japan. Or Krabi, it's Thailand's island treasure. You can get there by speedboat or Cozumel, Mexico's scuba paradise. Have not been. Sounds great book. You're somewhere to look forward to@expedia.com unpack25.