And judging by Mike Jeffries' picture, one he has not learned.

I think we just found the real Jack from Sideways.

Those teeth!

After glancing at the picture, I admit to thinking, "Jesus! What happened to his face?" He could serve as a lesson to everyone: there is beauty in youth, and in old age, but trying to substitute one for the other cheapens both.

the cheeks and jaw! He looks like he has acromegaly!

What a frightening looking man! Utterly bizarre and to think this guy is someones father. His kids must be hanging their heads in shame at this moement, I would be if I read about my father screaming that a male mannequin needed a bigger camel toe. And the writer forgot to add those with good satorial sense to the list of people against Abercrombie.

...who to blame for that abominable flip-flop trend on the campus where I work, like I want to look at grotty adolescent male feet while I'm waiting for my sandwich at Panera. And those horrible jeans that DON'T FIT, and the shirts that are supposed to look cool but just scream "suburban mall rat" and communicate to their professors that they're just there for the grade, and don't make them think or do math because they've got a night of hard partying ahead. Milling around on campus, screaming themselves hoarse outside the bars on Friday nights, what the vast majority of them don't seem to understand is that they're headed for a life of invisibility. They won't be the kids who go far, both in and out of academia. Do you think Bill Gates or Steve Jobs would have worn Abercrombie and Fitch? Maybe, but I doubt it.

And Jeffries--himself probably once a skinny kid who got his head dunked in the toilet one too many times for walking funny--may be making up for lost time, but he's probably also laughing all the way to the bank, marketing a delusion of coolness that'll tide these poor tykes over until hard reality socks them in the face and they wake up to a faux-Anglophile vinyl-sided development with a minivan and a pointless paper-shuffling job and three screaming brats of their own.

and this one begins with "Dude looks like Shrek in drag as Lance Bass! Gnarly, dude!!"

Seriously, folks, Aberclonebie & Fitch is the epitome of evil. Do you not see the eerie resemblance to Nazi iconography in their marketing ads with buff square-jawed Nordic looking pretty boys perched like stone-faced demigods above all us lesser mortals, expecting to be worshipped? The A&F "lifestyle" gives license to rich spoiled pretty white boys to act like the plantation owners they wish they still were. And after reading about the Stepford-like Moonraker-esque colony--er, I mean corporate headquarters, I'm even more certain of its nefarious mindset.

In the young gay male world to which I grudgingly belong, the A&F jocks strut around as 2D caricatures, "dude, sup?"-ing each other in their pathetic attempt to appear hyper-masculine. The A&F look acts like an armor against any hint of effiminacy which they equate wrongly with being a decent human being. Their contempt for any non-white, non-jock minority is blatant and they herd together like designer cattle speaking in grunts and monosyllables (which, to their credit, may have a complex lexicon I'm ignorant of that these guys perfect in their SS training camps--er, I mean fraternities).

Little proto-Nazis in training.

Besides, the clothes really do suck.

n/m

This is so familiar. The uniform of my high school years was similarly clone-like - Gant shirts, and Weejuns for the guys, Ladybug and Villager for the girls. All the cool kids had them; all the uncool kids (of which I was one) unsuccessfully begged our parents for them. They changed the colors every season so that you could tell at an instant whether someone was wearing "last year's" outfits. It was all designed to identify the in-crowd.

Aside from Jeffries' Peter Pan complex, there is nothing unusual about A&F's success. Few high school or college kids can think for themselves yet anyway and there will always be a "uniform", whether it's Weejuns or flip flops, baggy pants or bell-bottoms. It's the prep school set telling themselves that they still matter in the world. That it's become homo-erotic is not new either; just that we recognize it as such.

Wow, for someone so obsessed with building an exclusionary subculture based on looks, Mike Jeffries is one JACKED senior citizen. He looks like a cross betwixt Rocky Dennis and Sloth from The Goonies, minus the sweet personalities of both. Call me an idealist, but I hope no self-respecting woman (man?) would ever give ol' grandpappy here caught in a winter-life crisis the time of day. The sandals and teeth and contrived jeans are just all kinds of creepy. I'm 24 and no one I know considers A+F clothes to be anything but the uniform of the douchebag; the brand couldn't be any more pathetic if it tried. Fratboys are a joke. Come to think of it, the only people I've seen who wear A+F are thirtysomethings are trying, like, really hard. I almost want to pet them. Genuinely cool people have taste and style, which is why no one cool wears A+F.

Mike Jeffries probably masterbates to images of guys like me. I was cool in high school. Played football and lacrosse, went to parties, studied hard, had a hot girlfriend, got into a good college, led the prototypical all-american life. In many ways- I am the guy that Mr. Jeffries was trying so hard to connect with. Hell, I even worked at the store and saw the inner workings of this cult like retail chain- and make no mistake, it is quite cultish. But after being there for a few weeks, encouraged to ask any hot girl who walked in if she wanted a job while doing my best to avoid any customer interaction, I decided I could take it no longer. Aside from the crappy pay and functionally retarded management- the rotten sense of self entitlement and contrived feeling of superiority became harder and harder to wash away every time I clocked out (after hanging out in the bathroom to pad the paycheck a bit, of course). The store was evil. The store did have drones working there- kids blinded by chinos and khaki's and great looking coworkers eager to binge drink and fuck (which, if you're not a cynic, ain't that bad). And by all means was it discriminatory to everyone who looked different.

Morals and ethics and a sense of right and wrong were taboo, shallow vapidity the norm, and an almost robotic adherence to the almighty Ohio Corporate Office expected. Throw in a few thetans and we have Scientology's new wardrobe.

Yet the only thing I can think of now is "Damn, I wish I had thought of all this first."

As alluded to in an earlier letter, Mr. Jeffries is plastic smiling all the way to a very exclusive bank. I assume he is saving up enough money to buy a small Icelandic community- if only to bask in their Nordic glow and engage in circle jerks with their young male population- or at least a new set of brown shirted uniforms for his employee population. Joking aside, Mr. J is quite the marketing and branding genius. If we can get past the inherant repugnancy of trying to market to "cool" kids (which every brand does- Any one seen an ugly, nerd-archetype GAP model before?) you see his ability to connect to the masses pocket books. Not the Salon reading, quasi-intellectual, intelligista, but those among us who care not for the real but rather the "Reality Like"- all those poor souls Mr. Shahid referred to in the article. He has created a velvet rope phenomenon amongst a clothing store, where entrance into the cool club is yours- for only $25 a t-shirt. Pity those poor souls who buy in..... then again, pity all of us who buy anything because it was 'cool'.

All for now- I am off to play with my iPod.