The new Abercrombie, grown up and sexless?

London - Abercrombie has grown up. Or at least it is trying to. No longer the revered teen brand that once appealed to the affluent collegiate set, Abercrombie is trying to settle into adulthood, with all the uncomfortable changes and metamorphosis associated with leaving adolescence. To start, it means no more Bruce Weber ads, the photographer who's sexy campaign images helped elevate the brand to star status in the nineties. The models are now older, less naked, and as Abercrombie would have it, a little more sophisticated.

But the question remains if the public will accept the brand maturing in its development. When the company announced its second quarter results this week, shares plunged 20.3 percent, noting the gaps between brand perception, in-store experience, and reality. A&F's Wall Street investors were not pleased with the lacklustre results, perhaps expecting the brand to 'grow up' a little quicker.

Arthur C. Martinez, executive chairman of Abercrombie & Fitch, said, “We’re not a teen brand. We’re trying to demonstrate that in our visuals. We’re aging up our models that show our clothes in the photographs and in the in-store and online experiences. We haven’t just put better clothes on teen models — we’ve aged them up to be more appropriate [to the consumer we’re targeting] and with clothes that fit the lifestyle.”

The lights remain off at retail

If somebody switched the lights on at A&F's design and management headquarters, with the aim to take the brand into digital age, the lights remain off at retail. When this editor visitor a store, it was dark, with pumping music, and that awful scent hanging above the store entrance, like an acid rain cloud. Sure, there wasn't the usual beach babe sans t-shirt greeting customers at the door, but the merchandise didn't appear so special, or grown up.

The new brand vision that defines Abercrombie is more about an “American, casual luxury brand for the twentysomething consumer,” according to its company information on brand positioning. “Fabrication is one of our success stories,” Martinez told WWD, referring to the Epic flex denim fabric that once was available just at Hollister. That fabric is now offered at Abercrombie, with “stretch showing up in everything, in chinos, polos and shirts,” the executive chairman stated.

A&F's fabric choices are far from luxe

It is odd that Abercrombie would associate stretch with luxury, especially in shirting and cotton chinos, where filler fabrics are highly unnecessary. Stretch, in fact, is far removed from the luxury scale. While it can be a useful fabric, it has in recent years become an industry-wide additive to counter bad fitting garments. Natural fibres, when cut and assembled properly, are much more qualitative and lasting. When I checked Abercrombie's sweaters, what appeared to be plain cotton, was mixed with viscose and nylon. So too it's wool sweaters, which were largely a mix of wool blend, acrylic, or cotton with a dash of polyester. There was nothing luxe as far as the eye could see.

Companies like Topshop and Zara, who notoriously use cheap fabrics, are at least getting the product right. They know their customer and their clever marketing reflects this. A&F has lost its aspirational element, where Weber's once sexy tongue-in-cheek images of ultra fit and beautiful teenagers bring forth a sense of nostalgia, much like adolescence, it's legacy remains largely in the past.

The company is quite right to take its product and brand into a new direction, but the growing pains are highly visible. A retailer's lifespan, like that of human life, is complex and develops in stages and milestone over its course. In the end it is all down to experience, let's hope it's lifecycle has still some way to go.

Photo credit:A&F by Bruce Weber, A&F AW16 source: Wickieblog and A&F Facebook