Matching the surface-depth of an Abercrombie advertisement circa 1998, Alison Klayman’s “White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch” is a standardized and, unfortunately, scattered look at the titular company at the height of its cultural dominance in the 1990s and 2000s. What could’ve been an interestingly short segment on, say, CNN”s “The Nineties” is stretched to the breaking point as Klayman unpacks the moment that A&F went mainstream and the social backlash that ensued from their terrible — and often illegal — work practices.
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Featuring a steady stream of talking heads — former employees, models, cultural critics, bloggers, etc. — that are almost overwhelming in number, we are given some insight into how the company operated but often from store managers and models, not from the higher-ups who dictated these policies. Owner Les Wexner, Photographer Bruce Weber, and former CEO Mike Jeffries — the three most important figures in the ‘rise’ part of the narrative — are notably, and not surprisingly, absent considering the accusations that have been leveled at them recently (Here’s a hint about those accusations: Jeffrey Epstein, of course, shows up in this story).
What ‘White Hot’ does quite well is contextualizing the Abercrombie movement within the larger sphere of pop culture, succinctly showcasing how the sepia-tinged, overtly homoerotic Americana that Weber invoked became part and parcel with music, films, and photography within the late nineties and early aughts. By the time that future bar trivia answer LFO shows up to sing about “Summer Girls” who “wear Abercrombie & Fitch,” you’re either going to nod your head in remembrance or, depending on your age, wonder what in the hell everyone was thinking.
The film also frames the company within an explicit narrative of progress, using the final third or so to juxtapose old A&F against the new — progressive, inclusive, body-positive, etc. — Abercrombie. That approach simplifies, or really just ignores, questions of the ethics related to company activism, giving Abercrombie a pass to further reinvent their image, as they rebrand away from the exclusivity that Mike Jeffries preached to chase whatever trendy movement gives them the most sales and makes people forget about the horrible press they received for almost a decade. Those looking for a critique of corporate social activism shouldn’t expect much from a film more concerned with dissecting the intricacies of Abercrombie’s store layout and mall culture, more generally.
Instead, Klayman hones in on the coded — but still overt — racially discriminatory practices that Abercrombie used to build up their brand. We get a lot of discussion of how employees were hired, styled, and subsequently rated for their looks more so than their performance. By positioning the brand as “aspirational,” to quote Jeffries, Abercrombie pushed its bland WASP aesthetic onto the larger populace to lucrative results, at least for a while. We also see the lip service paid to diversity by the company, but only after a string of high-profile discriminatory cases against them.
Despite the surface-level sheen that Klayman puts on everything, ‘White Hot’ is much more invested in invoking and dismantling nostalgia than positioning Abercrombie alongside systemic problems within the fashion and clothing industry. Such an approach labels Abercrombie as more anomaly than anything endemic. This isn’t criticism, per se, but more to temper expectations as ‘White Hot’ fits snugly within whatever pop-doc category that Netflix’s algorithm has decided gets eyeballs and could even work as an odd companion piece to Klayman’s other surface-level Adderall ‘expose’ “Take Your Pills” (also on Netflix).
By the time that Joe Manganiello’s villain Flash Gordon shows up wearing Abercrombie in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man,” everyone seemingly knows that the cultural tide has turned against the company. What follows is an almost nausea-inducing jump from, say, 2002 to the present, as Klayman fast-forwards through the myriad problems that Abercrombie went through including the particularly insane decision to not hire Samantha Elauf as a worker because she wore a hijab and, then, fight the subsequent EEO lawsuit, going all the way to the Supreme Court instead of settling. That case could be its own film but is given maybe five minutes in ‘White Hot.’
Klayman’s film works best to capture the specific cultural moment when lacrosse could actually be considered a legitimate sport and clothing companies could sell their merchandise off of ads featuring near-naked models. However, when the film drifts into the larger discourse of Abercrombie’s fall, it favors simplistic answers — namely the democratization of social media — over a more critical interrogation of why Abercrombie fell, and how they are still trying to claw their way back to relevancy. [C]