Abercrombie & Fitch Are Now Plus Size Friendly?

Hey Everyone,

So following a slump in profits, Abercrombie & Fitch have now cottoned on to the fact that their shocking exclusionary policy is in fact holding back many of the people that would want to buy their clothes. *slow clap*

I myself have never felt the need to consider looking at their clothes even back when I would have fitted in them. I have a serious problem with the comments being made by the "controversial" CEO Mike Jeffries, for example:

"In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. 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. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either."

"We hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that."

"Listen, do we go too far sometimes? Absolutely. But we push the envelope, and we try to be funny, and we try to stay authentic and relevant to our target customer. I really don’t care what anyone other than our target customer thinks."

Vile right? Well the latest news is certainly a U-turn from the brand that doesn't go beyond a UK 14, which by the way is a size below the recognised UK average. 

Abercrombie & Fitch are well known for hiring models as sales assistants and their neo-preppy all American clothing, I can't see how that can translate into plus size. I would like to see plus size sales assistants (even one per store!) and the clothes displayed on larger sized mannequins, maybe then I would buy into this move more. I also have concerns that where their clothing is very athletically tailored, if we take that up a few sizes without changing the tailoring to reflect the curves which are in very different places it just wont look good.

So while it's good that they are embracing bigger sizes, I'm not buying into their reasoning behind it. It's a desperate attempt to bring in more business and undermines everything they have claimed to stand for in regards to their target customer and image, therefore making me question their integrity as a brand. I had more respect for them when they had their (be it incredibly skewed) opinions and they stuck to them and built the brand up around them. It makes a mockery of their CEO that's for sure, he now wants the people shut out from his shops to be parting with their hard owned cash to help save his failing business.

What are your thoughts? Will you be buying their new plus sized clothes when they are released?

Thanks for reading! Love Sally X