Mike Jeffries (The Abercrombie CEO)

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to support our work, get monthly bonus episodes, and join our community of listeners, including our upcoming quarterly Bad Gays Book Club. We start our brand-new season with the story of Mike Jeffries, the Abercrombie & Fitch CEO who turned a bankrupt old-school outdoors brand into a late-90s/early-00s temple of exclusionary “cool."  Surely you remember the ads, or maybe you remember the stores: the pumping music, the blasts of cologne that made your throat close up, the shutters across the front of the store, as if this little corner of a suburban shopping mall was actually an exclusive nightclub.  Or maybe you remember the Bruce Weber-shot soft-porn catalogue, which once featured an essay by (yes! no!) Slavoj Zizek.  Clothes for homophobic bullies were made in marketed from a self-hating gay sensibility: and the story of Mike Jeffries might be the single solitary key to understanding how the aesthetics of the closet became mainstream marketing, how a gay aesthetic was used to sell homophobic masculinity and how that tension crushed employees and turned its visionary into a monster now credibly accused of sexual assault and harassment. ----more---- For more on Mike Jeffries, read the sources we used to research this episode: Netflix: White Hot - The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch BBC: World of Secrets - The Abercrombie Guys https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/an-oral-history-of-abercrombie-and-fitch   https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-story-behind-fitch-the-homeless   https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2012/oct/18/abercrombie-fitch-boss-extraordinary-male-model-demands   https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/feature/fashion-photographer-bruce-weber-and-male-models-end-legal-battles-1234907151/   https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8vmy56yero   https://www.huffpost.com/entry/abercrombie-fitch-ceo-corporate-jet-rulebook_n_1980960   https://www.salon.com/2006/01/24/jeffries/   https://www.advocate.com/crime/abercrombie-fitch-mike-jeffries-dementia   https://www.theguardian.com/global/2024/sep/14/i-constantly-was-saying-no-ex-abercrombie-fitch-boss-accused-of-abuse-at-global-sex-events   https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/22/former-abercrombie-ceo-mike-jeffries-arrested-in-sex-trafficking-case.html\   https://www.businessinsider.com/michael-jeffries-partner-is-too-involved-2013-5   https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/02/former-abercrombie-fitch-ceo-accused-of-exploiting-young-men-for-sex   https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/55905/1/abercrombie-fitch-netflix-documentary-sexual-exploitation-racism-bruce-weber   https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/former-ceo-abercrombie-fitch-and-two-other-individuals-charged-sex-trafficking-and   https://archive.ph/JUDyD   https://www.thecut.com/2014/02/why-abercrombie-is-losing-its-shirt.html#   https://monoskop.org/images/d/db/A_and_F_Quarterly_Back_to_School_2003_The_Sex_Ed_Issue.pdf   https://www.complex.com/style/a/emilyl/revisiting-absurd-critical-theory-abercrombies-2003-back-school-catalog   https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/apr/19/abercrombie-fitch-netflix-documentary-fashion-discrimination   https://archive.ph/HdrvF   https://archive.ph/W0YZo   https://archive.ph/pAoOR   https://www.classaction.org/media/abercrombie-indictment.pdf   https://www.theguardian.com/business/interactive/2012/oct/19/abercrombie-fitch-aircraft-standards-manual?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487   https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB876176611622798500   https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/style/mario-testino-bruce-weber-harassment.html   https://web.archive.org/web/20170614225056/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-01-22/the-aging-of-abercrombie-fitch-i58ltcqx Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner. Michael Oswell is the voice of Slavoj Zizek.