Think Abercrombie & Fitch: a brand synonymous with the style of the ’90s and ’00s, bags with images of shirtless men on them, and cloying perfume pumped through every store.
However, behind that classic “all-American” brand was a system of excluding anyone who didn’t have the right “look” — that look being “thin, young, and white.” The Netflix documentary White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch explores Abercrombie & Fitch’s patterns of racial discrimination during the company’s heyday through interviews with former employees and executives. As one interviewee says in the trailer, “They didn’t invent evil, they didn’t invent class. They just packaged it.”
White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch is streaming on Netflix April 19.
