“You know that you’re getting close when you’re hit with the smell of Abercrombie,” begins the trailer for Netflix’s upcoming documentary about the scandal-soaked clothing brand, Abercrombie & Fitch. “The nightclub beats and bare-chested guys.”
Let’s travel back in time for a moment, shall we? The year is 2007 and I am literally dragging my mother by her hand through the mall to the tween holy grail of stores, ignoring her protestations that the incredibly unsubtle scent of cologne gives her a headache and the dim, cocktail-lounge lighting makes it nearly impossible to get a good look at what she’s buying. Maybe I’ll get lucky and walk out with a moose-emblazoned polo shirt, a turquoise striped one to match the rubber bands on my braces, tucked into a shopping bag plastered with a shirtless blonde hunk.
For those who were teenagers in the late ’90s and early aughts, Abercrombie is as synonymous with adolescence as acne. Maybe you plastered your walls with black-and-white images of models cut from the signature shopping bags or begged your parents for a needlessly expensive denim miniskirt to wear on your first day of school. Maybe you will forever associate the little moose logo with that one popular mean girl from your homeroom class. Maybe you simply remember it as the store between Sam Goody and the Auntie Anne’s pretzel stand in your hometown mall. (OK, now I’m just aging myself.)
