Abercrombie and glitz

A HUGE poster adorning the front of the former Habitat building in Dublin’s College Green in recent weeks distracted from the poor weather as its image of a perfectly toned and half-naked male torso turned heads.

Advertising the opening on Nov 1 of Abercrombie & Fitch’s first Irish store, across the street from the entrance to Trinity College, the rippling abs and pecs loomed large over D’Olier Street until the City Council ordered its removal over a planning permission row with the company. So already, long before it was due to opens its doors, the brand synonymous with American culture and gilded youth was creating controversy and buzz, adding to the mystique of a label that the vast majority of Irish parents know.

Having opened flagship stores in London, Copenhagen and Milan in recent years, as part of a phased European expansion, the company’s Dublin outlet, set to employ 300, comes partly as a result of Irish consumers’ devotion to its preppy products, which they bought on the internet and on shopping trips abroad. The ubiquity of the A&F logo on streets in Ireland over the past few years speaks volumes for its pulling power among its core demographic of teens and twentysomethings. The store, originally a banking hall dating back to the 1840s, set over three floors and renting for a rumoured €750,000 per annum for its pivotal location, is being refurbished in advance of its opening.

As famous for its products as it is for the often controversial manner of promoting them, A&F’s arrival into a struggling Dublin retail scene will be an interesting test of its Irish fan base’s loyalty. If the company’s openings in other European locations are indicative, it will likely be an event mixing canny marketing and cute self-promotion to a degree rarely seen before in this country.

For any adult who hasn’t taken a child on a shopping trip to Abercrombie, it will be a retail experience unlike any other. After you patiently endure the ever-present queue, where waits of up to an hour are not unusual, be ready for an assault on the senses eons beyond your past adventures on sales’ day in Arnott’s or BT’s.

After you pass a posse of ‘store models’ — him naked to the waist with abs Brad Pitt would die for; her with an equally revealing, willowy beauty straight out of the Kristen Stewart handbook — you pass into an interior of near darkness and all-enveloping sound.

Welcome to shopping as clubbing, in an atmosphere as disorientating for adults as it is attractive for kids. Lit only by pin beams highlighting perfectly folded piles of distressed jeans and faded polo shirts, plus a huge screen showing surfers catching waves at California’s Huntington Beach, this cavernous interior throbs to classic American rock anthems and the jabber of teenage voices in a dozen different tongues.

Even the air is different, as regular draughts of the A&F unisex cologne, Fierce, are pumped through the air vents. Grateful to ease themselves into the leather armchairs placed conveniently in the waiting lobby, befuddled moms and dads peer through the musky gloom as their teenage charges embark gleefully on buying sprees across the multiple levels.

At every turn, square-jawed ‘dudes and bettys’ — as the store models are called — inquire incessantly if you’re “having a fantastic day”. Be prepared, at every turn, for the rhetorical: “Welcome, how’re you doing,” from a Twilight lookalike.

No matter what you mumble, expect an enthusiastic “Awesome” in reply. On the balconies overlooking each level, pairs of these bodacious greeters drape themselves casually — him in swim shorts, she in bikini — as they chat, oblivious to the constant stream of retail traffic.

In advance of any store opening, A&F executives comb college bars, gyms, fitness centres and track meets in search of perfectly toned physical specimens that fit the company staff profile.

“These great-looking college kids exist all over the world,” says CEO Mike Jeffries. “We think there are Abercrombie kids everywhere.”

In 2004, Abercrombie & Fitch was forced to pay €$35m to African-American, Hispanic and Asian job applicants who took a class-action discrimination lawsuit accusing the clothing retailer of promoting white staff at the expense of minorities.

It charged A&F of hiring “a disproportionate white sales force and cultivating a virtually all-white image” and placing minorities in less-visible jobs. “All-American doesn’t mean all-white,” said Jennifer Lu, an employee at one of the company’s California stores and one of the plaintiffs. “You don’t see any African-Americans, Asian-Americans, it’s dominated by tall, Caucasian, football-looking, blonde-hair, blue-eyed males — that’s the image that they’re portraying and that they’re looking for.”

In another 2002 gaffe that provoked a similarly strong public reaction, an A&T t-shirt featuring caricatured faces with slanted eyes and rice-paddy hats had Asian-Americans in San Francisco demanding an apology from the retailer. The slogan: “Wong Brothers laundry service — two wongs can make it white” was quickly discontinued. “We are truly and deeply sorry we’ve offended people,” said the company apology. “We poke fun at everybody, from women to flight attendants to baggage handlers, to football coaches, to Irish-Americans to snow skiers. There’s really no group we haven’t teased.”

Regardless of its controversies and different style of marketing, the new A&F store is guaranteed a warm welcome from Irish teenagers and twentysomethings in love with its branding and culture.

The company’s other brands, Hollister and Gilly Hicks, have similarly dedicated fans among this high-spending but retail-savvy demographic.

Parents unfamiliar with the A&F experience should prepare for an uncomfortable, and expensive, day out. “The shop may be a mecca for teenage girls, but for their mothers it is hell on earth,” said an anonymous London blogger. “It’s so dark that you fall over the steps, music loud enough to give you a serious headache, a cloying smell of the scent and nowhere much to sit, while your beloved daughter spends 40 minutes queuing for one of the tiny number of changing rooms.

“After you’ve been there an hour, you will pay anything, and I mean anything, to get out of the place and foot the bill for a tatty-looking, distressed pair of jeans and a few T-shirts that comes to about £200. You vow never to set foot in the place again, then the next holidays come round and daughter is saying, ‘When can we go to Abercrombie again?’ ”