Netflixis pulling back the curtain on one of America’s most recognizable retail brands in their newest must-see documentary, and PEOPLE has the exclusive premiere of its trailer!
White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitchfollows the clothing company’s popularity in the late ’90s and early ’00s, and how controversy surrounding its exclusionary marketing and discriminatory hiring affected the company’s signature all-American image.
The documentary film, which debuts in April, comes from director-producer Alison Klayman, and features interviews with dozens of industry insiders and former A&F employees, executives, and models.
The brand was “selling a potent mix of sex and wholesomeness,” Netflix noted in a release. But getting a seat at the proverbial cool kids' table came at a cost, when the brand began firing people on the basis of their looks.
Konrad Fiedler/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“Abercrombie & Fitch said, ‘We go after the cool kids. If they didn’t look a certain way, they didn’t belong in our clothing,’ " one commentator explains in the trailer. “Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”
“Exclusion was the root of their success,” it’s said in the trailer. “Abercrombie rooted themselves in discrimination at every single level. There’s a reason people liked that brand. Exclusion is part of our society.”
One lawsuit, filed in 2009 and involving a teen who was told her hijab violated the store’s “look policy” when she applied to work there, went all the way up to the Supreme Court.
“[Abercrombie] had some really troubling behavior,” says one in the documentary, another adding, “They didn’t invent evil, they didn’t invent class, they just packaged it.”
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Klayman also released an exclusive statement to PEOPLE about the making of the film.
“While I was working on this film, I learned that whenever I mentioned Abercrombie & Fitch to someone, I was going to hear something personal. About first kisses and teenage insecurities. About where they grew up and how much money their family had. About their relationship to beauty standards, race and sexuality. About belonging,” Klayman said. “This film is for everyone who came of age in those years when the brand and its exclusionary vision of what it meant to be ‘all-American’ were touchstones in the culture.
White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitchhits Netflix April 19.
source: people.com
