In the hit 1999 song “Summer Girls”, LFO’s lead singer memorably reminisces, recalling “when I met you I said my name was Rich. You looked like a girl from Abercrombie and Fitch.” Teens everywhere knew exactly what he meant. In the late 90s and early 2000’s who didn’t want to look “like a girl from Abercrombie and Fitch?" As the tagline for the documentary White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch puts it, “all the cool kids were wearing it.”
White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch charts (unsurprisingly) the rise and fall of Abercrombie and Fitch. While the company was originally founded in 1892 to sell high end sporting and camping goods, by the 1990s Abercrombie and Fitch was largely selling a preppy style marketed as “casual luxury” to American teens who were rich enough and thin enough to buy it. The brand was unapologetically exclusionary with CEO Mike Jefferies infamously telling Salon in 2006,
“Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don't belong [in our clothes], and they can't belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”
Abercrombie’s strict and problematic dress codes for their employees, which the store officially called models, eventually made it all the way to the Supreme Court when A&F refused to hire a Muslim woman because she wore a headscarf. The brand argued that it didn’t fit their “classic East Coast collegiate style”. The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in favor of the applicant, Samantha Elauf, noting that it was clearly religious discrimination to refuse to hire someone for wearing a hijab.
The sordid history of the elitist fashion brand and the eventual backlash to their philosophy of exclusivity is covered in depth in Alison Klayman’s Netflix documentary. The White Hot documentary is directed by Alison Klayman and produced by Klayman, Hayley Pappas, and Emmet McDermott. Klayman is best known for her 2012 documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry which won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Klayman’s most recent project was Jagged, a 2021 documentary about Alanis Morissette. Jagged was reasonably well received by critics and audiences but was criticized by Morissette who was originally involved with the project but became unhappy with how the film was cut and edited, telling The Washington Post:
“I was lulled into a false sense of security and their salacious agenda became apparent immediately upon my seeing the first cut of the film. This is when I knew our visions were in fact painfully diverged. This was not the story I agreed to tell.”
Is There a Trailer for White Hot?
Netflix released a trailer for the doc on March 31st.
As “Celebrity Skin,” Hole’s iconic song about the price of fame, plays, we are shown those iconic Abercrombie ads of the late 90s and early aughts and reminded of the stores’ larger than life presence on malls with their “nightclub beats and bare chested guys.” Abercrombie and Fitch’s unapologetically exclusionary marketing, sizing, and hiring practices are discussed by former employees who note the store’s glorification of being “young, thin, and white.” it’s stated that “Abercrombie rooted themselves in discrimination at every single level.” The trailer makes clear that there will be a focus on the legal fallout of this culture of discrimination and the Supreme Court case. The trailer concludes with the memorable quote “they didn’t invent evil, they didn’t invent class, they just packaged it.”
Where can You Watch White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch?
The documentary released on Netflix on April 19, 2022. While Netflix doesn’t currently offer free trials, it’s easy to subscribe to the streaming giant for only a month or two. White Hot did not have a theatrical release and the documentary is not currently available to purchase on DVD.
Other Documentaries Like White Hot
FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened - If part of the appeal of White Hot is the schadenfreude of watching overconfident business executives with unethical marketing tactics fail spectacularly, then FYRE could be the documentary for you. Directed by Chris Smith, FYRE charts the failed Fyre Festival’s rise and fall. From the initial celebrity sponsors, to the boxed cheese sandwiches and FEMA tents, to the eventual fraud charges and lawsuits, Fyre Festival’s stranger than fiction story is as fascinating as it is bizarre. FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened is streaming on Netflix. If you need more Fyre Festival content you can also check out FYRE FRAUD, Hulu’s documentary on the notorious festival.
WeWork: or The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn - WeWork became famous for popularizing the idea of co-working spaces, but in 2019, following the company’s failed initial public offering, the founder Adam Neumann resigned in disgrace. The parties, the drugs, and the eventual collapse of the controversial company and its founder are the topics of Jed Rothstein’s WeWork: or The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn. WeWork is streaming on Hulu.
The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley - Entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes’s extreme take on the phrase “fake it till you make it” has made her and her failed blood testing company, Theranos, objects of much fascination. Her precipitous rise and fall are charted in Alex Gibney’s The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. The Inventor includes interviews with two of the Theranos whistleblowers, several former employees and multiple journalists who covered the story as it was happening. The documentary is streaming on HBO Max. It is also available to purchase from Amazon in both digital and physical form.
The True Cost - The True Cost is a documentary that looks at the problems of the fashion industry from a different point of view from White Hot, showing the alarming amount of waste and exploitation hiding behind the glossy ads and colorful garments of almost all fashion brands. Directed by Andrew Morgan, this hard hitting look at where our clothing comes from features interviews with fashion giants including Livia Firth, Vandana Shiva, and Stella McCartney. The True Cost is streaming on Tubi and is available on Amazon, both for purchase as a DVD or to rent or buy in digital form.
