The surprisingly subdued resurrection of Abercrombie & Fitch

It’s bachelorette season in America.

A couple of months ago, I was at one such party in Florida: nine women, one house, a zillion group activities to get dressed for. And something strange started to happen. Almost every time I complimented someone’s outfit — a cute jumpsuit or matching set — inevitably the response was: “Thanks, it’s from Abercrombie.” 

Wait, Abercrombie & Fitch? The dark store at the mall that reeked of cologne and had salespeople who were hot and white and wearing practically nothing? What year is it? 

Back home in New York, I stumbled upon a real-life Abercrombie store and decided to investigate. The first thing I noticed was that it didn’t smell. Like anything. 

Then, I was impressed by the clothes: pretty good quality, decent price, and styles that worked for the 86 weddings I’ll be attending in the next calendar year.  

I bought an engagement party-appropriate dress, then headed up to Central Park for a softball game with some of my old colleagues. One of them noticed my shopping bag and informed me that I was not alone in my rediscovery of Abercrombie.

So many people are getting reacquainted with the brand that its stock quietly gained 285 percent last year, making it the best-performing stock on the S&P index. It even beat out AI chipmaker Nvidia. And it’s not like it’s just a meme stock: Abercrombie has generated more than $4 billion in revenue in the last fiscal year. 

So, how did Abercrombie pull off its stunning renaissance — seemingly under the radar? 

“Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

This is not Abercrombie’s first comeback. One of the original American clothing brands, founded in 1892, it dressed everyone from President Theodore Roosevelt to Amelia Earhart. But the company’s star turned and it ultimately filed for bankruptcy in 1976. 

Then, in 1988, it was acquired by The Limited, the owner of big mall clothing brands like Victoria’s Secret. It put a new CEO in charge, Mike Jeffries. Jeffries turned Abercrombie into a mall staple by targeting a new teenage clientele with American prep and a new, hypersexualized flavor.

“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,” Jeffries told Salon in 2006. “Candidly, we go after the cool kids … A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.” 

That exclusionary ethos worked in some ways — Abercrombie & Fitch became an iconic part of culture, getting name-dropped in shows like Friends, for example. But in much bigger ways, it ran the company directly into hot water. Over. And. Over. Again. 

In 2002, it sold thongs emblazoned with phrases like “eye candy” and “wink wink” — in the children’s section. Later that year, it dropped a T-shirt designed to look like advertising for a Chinese laundromat, with the racist slogan “Two Wongs can make it white.” 

There was even a Supreme Court case. Samantha Elauf, a Muslim woman, alleged that the company refused to hire her because her hijab didn’t comply with their “looks policy” for employees. (“This is really easy,” Justice Antonin Scalia said when he handed down a victory for Elauf in 2015.) 

This was all happening in contrast to a growing body positivity movement. Eventually, the dissonance — combined with economic fallout from the Great Recession — proved to be too much. Its share price dwindled until finally, in 2016, Abercrombie became America’s most hated retailer. RIP. 

The Abercrom-back 

After the brand’s fall from grace, Abercrombie’s C-suite got a makeover. Jeffries was pushed out in the 2010s, and new executives took his place. Their first priority was undoing some of the damage Abercrombie had wrought on its image in the aughts. 

The old Abercrombie (in)famously refused to sell clothes in sizes larger than L, or above a women’s size 10. The new Abercrombie goes up to size 32. Now, instead of overly sexy photoshoots, its ads are more tasteful, featuring models more representative of a broader range of potential customers. 

The new Abercrombie is also less focused on reacting to fashion trends and appeasing high school hierarchies, and more on equipping a new generation of 20-somethings with basic, quality pieces appropriate for weddings and work, well-fitting denim, and sturdy workout apparel. 

“They’re using a lot of higher-end materials like wool and cotton and cashmere, and there’s also been a lot of focus on fit,” Fast Company senior writer Elizabeth Segran told Today, Explained. “This is all really important because this is all happening in the context of fast fashion. And the fast fashion world is famously about making clothes as cheap as possible and making them so trendy that you can throw them out after a few wears. This is very distinctly going against all of that.” 

Segran says there’s a reason you haven’t seen big, splashy ads announcing Abercrombie’s return. Rather than do a whole public reintroduction to the brand — which probably would have required some sort of acknowledgment of its sordid history — Abercrombie executives have said they wanted the products to lead. 

They wanted customers to feel like they had discovered the new Abercrombie for themselves. So they partnered with content creators on social media, opened up new (scentless) stores in strategic locations, and relied on word of mouth to do the rest. 

“Our plan is to go from being the best-kept secret in fashion to their favorite brand,” Abercrombie’s head of merchandising Carey Krug told Fast Company.

So far, it’s working. 

Segran told Today, Explained that this revival is not just an Abercrombie story. Legacy retailers like J. Crew and Gap — which have struggled to compete with younger direct-to-consumer brands like Everlane and Reformation — could learn a thing or two from Abercrombie’s revival. 

“Abercrombie’s story shows us that if a brand has this long history and a place in American retail history, it can come back.”

This story originally appeared in Today, Explained, Vox’s flagship daily newsletter. Sign up here for future editions.