The Rebranding of Abercrombie

By Victoria Correa

If you got your clothes from Abercrombie & Fitch any time in the 2000s and early 2010s, then you remember the stench of perfume, loud music, and, of course, muscular, shirtless men walking around. 

When the clothing company was founded in 1892 in Manhattan, Abercrombie & Fitch was a hunting gear company. It continued to sell hunting and safari clothing for a century. However, starting in the 1990’s, Mike Jeffrey wanted to appeal to the “All-American Cool Kid” when he took the helm as CEO. So, he made changes to make the stores aggressively trendy — dark lights, earsplitting music, A&F Fierce perfume, and extremely conventionally attractive salespeople in their stores. If you were a salesperson at Abercrombie, you were told to speak informally and greet customers with, “Hey, how’s it going?” The goal was to make the brand appear laid-back despite all the intense marketing strategizing behind the scenes. 

In the early 2000s, the company’s influence over fashion trends was extensive in middle and high schools across the nation. Some girls in middle school, including me, thought that Abercrombie and Hollister were the epitome of fashion. I will say I did feel more confident whenever I repped A&F or Hollister in school, despite still having the insecurities of your average middle school girl. 

Abercrombie’s women’s sizing did not include XL or XXL. Mike Jeffries blatantly said, “A lot of people don't belong (in our clothes), and they can't belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely." Because of the brand's ideals of exclusivity in the 2000s, Abercrombie played a huge role in perpetuating fat-phobic, hyper-masculine, and white supremacist beauty standards among tweens and teens. The brand’s marketing strategy aimed to distract kids with the concern about being perceived as “cool,” incentivizing them to ask their parents to buy them Abercrombie. In addition, some immigrant parents who raised their children in American suburbia shopped almost exclusively at Abercrombie in order to make their kids look more assimilated. 

However, starting in 2018, things changed. Executives at Abercrombie and Hollister realized that members of Gen-Z were less concerned about fitting conventional beauty standards, and more focused on being comfortable with their identities. They marketed Hollister for teens and Abercrombie for people in their 20s. Abercrombie’s new strategy was to reconnect with the generation of college students and graduates who remember them from middle school. Whenever Abercrombie has come up in conversation, people have said that they like the rebranding of Abercrombie. It’s still marketed as laid back, but with a twist —you do not need to be conventionally attractive to feel welcomed by their professed chill vibes. Specifically, it’s more size-inclusive and racially inclusive. If you look at the website, you’ll see more models of different races. You’ll see a bit more body-type diversity in women’s clothing, and not exclusively burly men sporting the mens clothing anymore. The models on website photos and in-store posters appear more welcoming rather than haughty. They got rid of the strong perfume, blaring music, and shirtless male models. In addition, TikToks of Abercrombie hauls nowadays are marketed to be more relatable to a broader audience than before. While I have personally exhibited brand loyalty to A&F and Hollister jeans since 2013, I’ve recently started buying more of their tops and other items in college. I think that they’ve been doing a great job with their rebranding, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for the brand.