Kirstie Alley isn’t happy with Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries after some remarks he made about the way his company does things.
Jeffries was quoted in a Salon interview in 2006 as saying: “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….”That’s why 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.”
Though he said the words several years ago, they’re coming back to haunt him now after resurfacing during promotion for a book called “The New Rules Of Retail” by Robin Lewis and Michael Dart. The authors reference the fact that A&F don’t offer XL sizes in their stores, which has garnered a petition on Change.org. Now, the fact that the company openly admits to having exclusionary practices has enraged many, including celebrities.
“Abercrombie clothes are for people who are cool and look a certain way and are beautiful and are thin’ and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That would make me never buy anything from Abercrombie,” Alley said. “I’ve got two kids in that bracket, but they will never walk in those doors because of his view of people — forget women, his view of just people.”
Jeffries’ comments have received so much backlash that a filmmaker, Greg Karber, went on a mission recently to find A&F clothing at Goodwill stores and donated every piece he found to homeless people in his city. So far, Jeffries has had no comment.