Humoring Ethnic America: Abercrombie & Fitch Still Doesn't Get It

Emil Guillermo, Special to SF Gate
Tuesday, April 23, 2002

Here's how trendy I am. Before last week, my teenage daughter was telling me that the really  fashionably hip kids at her suburban school shop at Abercrombie & Fitch.

Now, I realize Banana Republic doesn't sell bananas. And I know Old Navy actually sells "new" stuff. But I swear, I thought Abercrombie & Fitch still sold safari wear to wannabe colonial elites just like it did 100 years ago. So I asked my daughter, "You mean spoiled, obnoxious teenagers these days want to dress up like Teddy Roosevelt?"

I found out that's true only if TR was into nouveau grunge. (Speak softly, but carry a big skateboard.) Apparently, it's not your great-grandfather's A&F. But it's still marketing with a colonial mentality – to the young. How else could you explain those T-shirts the company both introduced into and pulled from stores last week?

The most offensive shirt featured two smiling, slant-eyed gents with pointy bamboo rice-paddy hats, presumably the proprietors of the Wong Brothers Laundry Service. Their motto: "Two Wongs Can Make it White."

Ha-ha. Oh, and, of course, there's the brand name of century-old Abercrombie & Fitch, purveyors of ethnic slur masquerading as in-your-face fashion, underneath it all. It used to be said that society would be in full embrace of diversity once people figured out how to make money off of it. Boy, was I Wong! (There's that insidious A&F humor again).

Frankly, I admit to being stunned by the store's strategy here. Can you really market to diversity with racism? Someone at A&F's corporate headquarters in Ohio thought so. (Who was in the focus group? The  KKK?) Of course, no one was willing to cop to a formal strategy. Which is why you hire a PR guy. "We thought everyone would like these T-shirts," company spokesman Hampton Carney said to reporters. (Can't you just see his smiling white teeth?) And to think it launched just before Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in May! Carney claimed the company pokes fun at everyone, which really makes me afraid. What's next?

"Kiss Me, I'm a Beaner" T-shirts for Cinco de Mayo? How about a summer T-shirt showing two black guys eating fried chicken and watermelon? You know the company would never do that. Not unless it were willing to subject itself to an outcry that would end up with A&F having to appoint Al Sharpton to be its next CEO.

But for some reason, Asian Americans (a group to which I, as a Filipino American, belong), have always been considered fair game. I guess A&F figured, "Who's going to complain?"

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ermo.DTL)