 
|
|||||||||||||
              
|
Mt. Lebanon mom joins battle against Abercrombie Some catalogs are just too much Friday, July 06, 2001 By Michael Kolber, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Wendy Smith had heard there was some pretty racy stuff in the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. After she listened to yet another tirade against the catalog, the Mt. Lebanon mother of three young girls went to the chain's South Hills Village store to see for herself.
She walked past the wood-paneled display cases, across the red plaid carpet, under the faux-antler light fixtures, all beneath the gaze of black-and-white photos of seminude models. At the counter, she showed the clerk her ID -- you have to be 18 to buy the catalog -- and for $6 bought the A&F Quarterly, which is half lifestyle magazine, half sales vehicle.
Smith sat in the parking lot, and as she flipped through the pages she became more and more furious. She says she felt betrayed: A clothing company that was popular among her daughters' friends, that had been an upscale outfitter for hunting and camping expeditions for most of the 20th century, was selling a catalog that, in her mind, amounted to pornography.
"I certainly know to put up my guard when I send them into a bookstore or a movie theater," said Smith, who has started organizing a boycott of the retailer. "You don't expect that, when you send your children into a clothing store, there's going to be pornography."
But Smith said her concern was not so much that her children were seeing the catalog. After Lt. Gov. Corinned Wood of Illinois criticized Abercrombie for its Christmas 1999 catalog, the company began shrink-wrapping the catalogs and stopped selling them to children. However, Smith is worried that by allowing her children to wear Abercrombie gear she is endorsing the world view of the promiscuous "party lifestyle" the company has made its calling card -- the equivalent of permitting her 8-year-old to wear a Playboy bunny visor.
While tame compared with Maxim and the other British-inspired "lad mags," the A&F Quarterly takes more after Hugh Hefner than J. Peterman.
Smith is not alone in her nascent crusade. In May, she enlisted the aid of the Pittsburgh Coaltion against Pornography, which has 6,000 people on its mailing list. Meanwhile, the Michigan-based American Decency Association has launched a national boycott, upset that the summer A&F Quarterly is as sexual as it is. The catalog's first 121 pages are filled with occasionally homoerotic photos of nude models cavorting in groups, interspersed with articles on the issue's theme the "Pleasure Principle." The clothing for sale isn't pictured until page 122.
In the eyes of people like Bill Johnson, the president of the American Decency Association, the connection between the A&F Quarterly, hard-core pornography and broken homes is clear.
"It can cause a young man to get caught up in pornography," Johnson said. "It can affect their views toward women."
Smith, a lawyer who said she had never launched a campaign like this before, was particularly taken aback by an interview with porn star Ron Jeremy in the spring issue. The interviewer asked for advice on how to break into the adult-film industry; Smith said the story seemed to encourage readers to become porn stars.
"I found it really stepping over the edge," Smith said.
But hundreds of thousands of college-age people do not. Since the magazine's launch in the fall of 1997, its circulation has grown to 400,000.
Customers said the catalog is an incentive to shop Abercrombie instead of American Eagle, which sells similar clothes for less.
"It's a good catalog with a lot of good pictures," said Erin Patsko, 17, of Mars, who was shopping at the Ross Park Mall store Tuesday. "It makes it seem more of a big store."
The New Albany, Ohio, company says the catalog, and its clothing, is intended for 18- to 22-year-olds and that all the furor may just be transgenerational miscommunication. There are no plans to tone down future issues.
"We're not going to waver under the pressure from these people," Abercrombie spokesman Hampton Carney said. The back-to-school issue is due in stores this month.
The A&F Quarterly is the central component of Abercrombie's corporate identity and an effective way to build a market for its clothing.
"They're really getting inside the lives of the people who are buying the clothing," said Rodney Underwood, chief creative officer of the Pittsburgh advertising firm Blattner Brunner.
How Abercrombie came to be the edgy Eddie Bauer has a lot to do with its history. Founded in 1892 as a New York outfitter, it equipped Theodore Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway. It opened stores across the country, but by 1977 it was bankrupt. The Limited Inc., which also spawned Victoria's Secret, bought the brand in 1988 and later spun it out into a separate company, with the new 20-something image.
Still, Abercrombie, along with the rest of the garment industry, has fallen on hard times in recent years. In May, it sold 2 percent less merchandise than it did at the same stores last year. Abercrombie has three stores near Pittsburgh, and a fourth is set to open in Robinson.
To its critics, the chain is too successful. They criticize the firm for promoting a lifestyle -- one that is alien to many over 22.
"They're selling cool; they're not selling clothes," said Dorn Checkley, president of the Pittsburgh Coalition against Pornography.
Checkley, of course, has it exactly right, and the more he and others protest, the more appealing the clothing will appear.
"If I'm Abercrombie and Fitch I couldn't be happier," Underwood said. "I'm talking to a sexually charged market. To them, to find out pornography groups are up in arms, then I want it even more."
|
||||||||||||
