User Reviews

There was so much more about A&F, as well as the Wexner empire.

We needed more tracing the money trails and payouts.

Sexual harassment was barely detailed.

The diversity officer was allowed to not answer questions asked.

This was basically the video version of a wikipedia entry.

Why then did I give it five points?

At least it brought the topic up about corporations and branding, targeting consumers, and the impact CEO's decisions can have on consumers' lives and perceptions.

Really, however, it was superficial, which is very sad.

I hate writing reviews but decided to write this one after reading several clearly biased reviews on this documentary.

Coming in 2 minutes shy of the 90 minute mark this documentary can give you a bit of whiplash. Brace yourself for a fun but bumpy ride.

What they got right. The former staff interviews hit all their proper marks. The background info on how A&F came to be and how it took itself down by their own policies as informative as reading a NYT write-up about it.

What they got wrong,. Wwll that's easier to explain. They needed more time. I can't believe I'm going to say this but I think this should have been a 2-3 part documentary wat 40 minutes each episode. The reason why I say this is because it truly was rushed. Nothing new was brought to light. No deep dive. It was like the cliftnotes version of what happened.

Yes, we know A&F had a inclusion problem but give me some background on why. Meaning, there are several companies at the time that marketed the exact same way. Yes, they briefly mentioned Polo and CK, but what happened to Structure, Express, Banana Republic? Just my opinion, but I do believe they needed more time to bring in their point.

I could go on and on but I think those were the key things I wanted to point out.

The next documentary some other channel is going to make is "Woke Hot: The Rise and Fall of Netflix". It will be about how a channel that started with a pretty good marketing angle decided to start ramming identity politics down people's throats in one disaster unpleasant project after another and crashed and burned.

Here it is Abercrombie & Fitch. I really thought they were going to tell the story of a venerable company, the once high quality brand that went too postmodern, lost its way, started producing its clothes in China and hence lost both its respected old world name and reputation for quality clothes. That might have been an interesting story.

Nope. Not even close. It turned out to be yet another (how many is it now?) story about people complaining that some company isn't nice to them, and whose brand was "too white" and actually glorified good looking people, and where does that leave the ugly and fat people out there? Excluded. This is where my niece would come in an say "do you want some cheese with that whine?" For me, the new stock phrase is that these are now "The Days of Whine and Poses".

It did have one salutary effect -- it shows pretty clearly what is wrong with the civil rights laws in this country. If some company wants to push a particular "look", a "brand" -- something that involves a message that appeals to a particular demographic, what business is it of anyone but their stock shareholders? A Hip Hop/Rap fashion magazine might push African themes, or Urban themes, with the corresponding black people to sell them. Country and southern whites might want the same, or someone wanting to tap into the Laplanders ethnic group might want to find some Lapps to have as spokesmen (shriek, "but, but you should say 'spokespeople', grief, I'm feeling faint.") It's all too boring and silly.

To be fair, me and the wife had decided the day before to cancel Netflix, but in wandering around the channel seeing if there was anything I wanted to watch before it turns off, this came on, and it simply confirmed why Netflix is utter garbage now. It's too bad, it used to not try my patience every night, but it's too much.

This wasn't the best documentary I've ever seen, but it was interesting. All the people reviewing it on here saying how whining is annoying and don't get so offended, blah blah- are doing the same thing by writing dumb reviews. You can't discriminate against people as an employer. What they did was wrong, period. It's not okay to discriminate against looks, race, etc. And the sexual assaults? Even worse! They could've dived deeper into that aspect. It was a garbage company who only wanted hot white people to work for them. To all the offended right wing whiny hypocrites reviewing- thanks for the good laugh lol.

Love the people complaining about cancel culture who come here to leave a 1-star review and whine.

If people don't get why the doc targets this shop an not another it's pretty simple: they were very popular, they discriminated way more than other shops, there's proof of the discrimination, they got sued and had to settle, their brand became tacky and never recovered.

I'm willing to be the low ratings are from the very people that A&F were marketing to. I found this documentary to be quite interesting. It was great to hear from people that held various positions in the company, and their realization (present day) that they worked for a very toxic company. I'm glad I watched.

I first discovered a&f in Milan in 2012. What I most remember about it was the style of the store, prices and one black and one white guy at the entrance showing their abs. Seeing this whole documentary just about race is just so disappointing. From the trailer i thought it will be about the rise and fall of a&f, instead is just a boring interview of some random ex-teens about their feelings remembering the brand.

I bet there are many YouTube videos about this brands history that is better done than this doc. So disappointed at Netflix for another low budget-low effort product that I'm pretty sure I'm gonna delete my account now (jk i have to wait for Better call Saul to end)

STAR RATING: ***** Brilliant **** Very Good *** Okay ** Poor * Awful

In the 90's, as 'mall culture' took off in the states (and to a great extent across the pond) and teens strive to look as cool and trendy as their peers, Abercrombie and Fitch cornered the market, employing some high concept ideas to really stand out from the competition. Originally an outdoor men's clothing wear company, founded by Les Waxner, flamboyant entrepreneur Mike Jeffries brought it and transformed it into the top name in retail fashion. However, as time went on, evidence of nefarious, discriminatory employment practices came to light, which started the ball rolling on its shattering fall from grace.

Although I was a teenager in the 90's, I must confess keeping up with fashion wasn't really my thing, and the name Abercrombie & Fitch didn't mean anything to me. I definitely wasn't one of the 'cool' kids, and I definitely didn't belong to that crowd. Indeed, the only time I heard the name mentioned was when that LFO song was in the charts, which as a former employee notes here, was when he knew the brand had made it. And the second time I heard of it was in this documentary, charting the rise and fall of the fashion giant, which ends up shining a wider light on the ethics of capitalism.

It certainly was a time when kids were bombarded with constant reinforcements of 'the perfect look', with American teen dramas like Dawson's Creek populated with almost exclusively chiselled, good looking characters, whilst adverts for retail brands on billboards featured similar such figures. A&F, under Jeffries, tapped in to this culture, with a business model that was actively discriminatory, and geared towards a particular customer, which eventually manifested into outright bigotry and racism, which sparked its downfall. Other reviewers have mentioned other retailers that catered to a more urban environment, but an organisation as mainstream as that really should have been seen what a wider demographic groups like African Americans represented and responded to it.

Thankfully, things have changed a bit today, where individuality is celebrated over rugged conformism. Director Alison Klayman's film is certainly exploring an interesting shift in societal attitudes, but is presented in too much of a light, fluffy fashion to really scrutinise the issues on hand with as much power as it needs. ***

It's incomplete, at best. Context is everything, and mall culture of the late 90s/early 2000s had specific aesthetics for each store. Express and Guess employees had high heels and were dripping in makeup, Tommy Hilfiger's had baggy clothes and fades, Hot Topic's wore head to toe black and lots of eyeliner. Abercrombie was no different. This "documentary" is an hour and a half of clickbait.

I was completely absorbed by this documentary. I wasn't young during the time in question (roughly mid-90s to 2014), so I didn't shop at A&F that much, but I've always liked "preppy" clothes and I did shop there on occasion. While I saw their obvious "exclusion" policies when I was in one of their stores, I didn't think much of them since they didn't affect me. But the documentary educated me about how harmful it can be to categorize most people, or even a single person, as unworthy.

As for many of the other, negative reviews posted here, the authors quite obviously are unware of what A&F was all about and the purposes of the film.

As "White Hot" (2022 release; 88 min.) opens, we are introduced to Jose Sanchez, a former recruiter for Abercrombie & Fitch who explains what the rules were to be hired as a store employee: "all American" looks, nothing more, nothing less. We then go back in time to the brand's outdoor beginnings, only to take a sharp turn in the early 90s, and building itself as exclusionary, for the cool kids only... At this point we are 10 min into the documentary.

Couple of comments: this is the latest from up-and-coming documentarian Alison Klayman, who just last year brought us the excellent "Jagged" (about Alanis Morrissette). Here she examines the dark underbelly of Abercrombie's corporate culture, and it ain't a pretty picture (and I'm being mild). Disguising its outright exclusionary as "all Americanism", Abercrombie was "white hot" for some years in the late 90s and early 00s, just as the malls around this country reached their peak popularity and alternative indie rock ruled the airwaves. It will likely come as a surprise to many that Abercrombie isn't based in New York or LA, but it's located in the heartland right here in Ohio (where I live), in a wealthy suburb of Columbus. The documentary features a ton of former A&F recruiters, models and executives. It all makes for okay viewing, but just okay. Please note that, per the movie's opening credits, the movie is simply called "White Hot", and not "White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch".

"White Hot" premiered on Netflix this weekend. If you are interested what made Abercrombie & Fitch so hot for some years, only to burn itself down along the way, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

Top down this is just a lesson in demographic marketing that exists even if it is offensive, being woke and pressing on one company doesn't make a movie about it, and it isn't really even the rise and fall it is mostly rise and wokeness. Right? Wrong? Doesn't matter it happens because it's all about the corporate bottom dollar. I mean this stuff happens to ANY demographically targeted brand. Should we pick Against All Odds and their urban targeted clothing? Should we pick Sears for targeting men with Craftsman because there was no Craftswoman? Pac Sun? Ron Jon? Is an upscale store considered to be forcing out the poors? Someone will always be offended. Supposedly non discriminatory hiring won't help. A white wino and a well dressed black guy walk into a suit store applying for a job the black guy would get hired. A preppy computer nerd doesn't usually turn up at a Cabela's gun counter. Is it necessarily legal? No. But it's not an exclusive Abercrombie & Fitch issue and didn't need a movie. It's not even the reason brands like A&F fall, people move to new brands because it gets old.

Dei: how dare you hire people based on what they look like. Solution, hire people based on what they look like... because skin color matters, but it's not suppose to, unless it's for dei...

Is fubu still a thing? Did white people work there?

Could have been a good, interesting story about a company that skyrocketed and the culture that propelled it.

Instead it was just more woke anti-white rhetoric.

Watched the doco shamed overnight person and xenophobic exclusivity brand, can't help to think there's more than that, those settlements similar to that bait system to Jeff Epstein closed door shenanigans.

As a Swede I had barely heard of this boring, generic brand. Feels like a very American clueless fast fashion thing. And what a bizarre, unpleasant (understatement of the year) openly racist, sexist company it turned out to be. Would a company in Europe had gotten away with this type of behaviour for so many years (and up until so recently!)? Shouldn't think so.

This is a doc that will, like A&F, be for a particularly inclined person. That's not too say it will be only for those who tend to have strong feelings for equality though it certainly will be of interest to that movement. It will also be for those in the marketing aspect of the business world. It's probably of interest to those who lived through it and bought into the brand. I don't fit any of these save for the fact I did study marketing in college. My take away and why I watched is the question of how this company got away with their corporate mission and how it became so influential while being blatantly racist and exclusionist. This should have been a narrow small niche retailer and not a leading tastemaker. Being at one time in a fraternity it reminded me of that. Put on an outward image of upright socially and morally, but partying like a bunch of badly behaved spoiled brats with no rudder or compass. The fact this concept got so big before it imploded makes one scratch the old noggin'. I think we all know better and the brand got it's "just up commence" as our Brit friends cleverly sum it up as. It's a waste of energy to watch because we all know better yet it is quite a curious story in the American retail landscape. One interviewee summed it up: "It was everything we wanted not to be".

This documentary is not helpful. In fact it is an utter failure. It's not interesting, there's no story to tell or problem to solve. The best part of this film are the other reviews that are more thoughtful than this one.

I thought I would learn about the history of the store and products. How items were made, etc.

What I got was another display of sensitive millennials claiming victimhood. Every other store can have a target demographic. Who do you think shops at Citi Trends???????? Not people who want to dress preppy. Just because some people got their feelings hurt means the rest of us cannot have a store we enjoy. I am not white and not pretty enough to be a model so I would never have been hired, but I like their clothes. GET OVER IT! Are people mad at Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein? What about Tommy Hilfiger?? Stupid politically correct whiney crap makes me sick. Some people are more attractive and that's why they are MODELS!!! As long as they recruited people of any race that fit their "look" who cares?

People in the reviews MAD about this being "about race" and/or "woke"... Y'all just plain missed the definition of a DOCUMENTARY. I thought it was a nice explanation of the history behind the brand.

I was excited to watch this because I was a tween/teen while the brand was popular. I was a few minutes in when I realized this was just a "woke" documentary talking about how terrible white people are, again. I won't be wasting any more of my time on this.

A company that openly admits who its targeted audience is. What a concept. Sorry Netflix and the producers of this effort, your show made me suddenly want to buy A&F products.

Wow! Couldn't even get through this mess to the end. If you are into boring takes on "perceived" racism (insert long yawn) then this is for you!

Weird that nothing was mentioned regarding other brands that catered to their ethnic audience that were popular brands at the time. FUBU, Baby Phat...the list goes on and on. Of course that wouldn't fit into the narrative, so it isn't discussed. Shocker.