Oh. We’re Just Getting Started

What do I think about Mike Jeffries, the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch? I think he’s a moron. Why? Because it’s easier to sell clothes, an image, an idea to people who are desperately striving to attain an ideal than to those who’ve already arrived. The trick is to convince the short, fat, disproportioned that Abercrombie & Fitch clothes will fix them, make them cool. Replace the sow’s ear with the prettiest pink purse. The people who are already cool? They don’t need A & F clothes. They could wear rags. I’m 65 and I know how high schools work. I went to one.

Now the hubbub is about giving Abercrombie & Fitch clothes to homeless people as a way to rebrand the label as something worn by society’s lowest of the low. Take that, Mr. Jeffries! How do you feel about your precious clothes now? Now that the halt and the lame and the un-showered are slipping into your duds and strutting down the street just like the cool kids at school? Talk about going for the throat. Painful. Mortifying.

It wouldn’t be any fun unless the defenders of the homeless got into the act. Sure enough, today’s L.A. Times opines that “Using the homeless to bash Abercrombie & Fitch not cool.” The author, Robin Abcarian, makes a valid point that the “fitchthehomeless” YouTube showing A & F clothes being distributed to homeless people is based on the premise that “homeless are irredeemably uncool” to which I might respond, you might be surprised at how cool many homeless folks are, but that’s beside the point. I get her criticism. The #fitchthehomeless idea is meant to degrade the product by having homeless people wear it.

I have a couple issues with her perspective. First, people who are homeless can speak for themselves. They need stuff but they don’t need your deciding what exploits them and what doesn’t. They can figure that out. Second, people who are homeless can and do say no to gifts, services, shelter and very often have a stronger sense of self and what they will and won’t tolerate than many of us who are housed. It is not the weak who are out there on the streets. Third, it is hard to imagine that this snotty company’s stupid marketing strategy intersects in any way with what is important to the average homeless person on the street. It is a controversy orbiting a planet not yet named. If the hoodie’s warm and fits, fine.

If the goal is to shame Abercrombie & Fitch, I think there is more work to be done — whole armies of the uncool that could be mobilized. The chubby, the fat and the morbidly obese. The mom jean wearers and the guys who wear jorts. Women who wear pantyhose with sandals. Men who wear short-sleeve dress shirts and clip-on ties. Old ladies who tease their hair and use AquaNet. Guys with fascinating comb-overs. And then there is the vast and growing legion of baby boomers, the sixty-somethings who grew up cool and think they will always be cool, even as they fold their physical selves into their pants and watch their underarm flab move with the breeze. This is the lemming force of the newly uncool and we are so ready to fuck this guy up.

And if I’m standing with a homeless guy when it all goes down, so much the better.