Tasteful store-sized billboard over Abercrombie's Fifth Avenue flagship store.
Dear readers, please forgive this short post. Beauty U has been closed four days in a row due to the recent weather/power outage insanity, so I’m fresh out of school news.
But now that I’ve got interweb access restored, I did want to pop on and direct your attention to Jezebel’s great piece on Abercrombie & Fitch’s discriminatory hiring practices, which more or less boil down to “only hot blonds need apply.”
Beauty U. classmate Meg survived an Abercrombie stint at our local mall a few years ago and reports that her store’s manager arranged employee schedules to make sure that the prettiest people worked during peak shopping hours. “They would also call me and the other skinny, blond girl in for extra shifts whenever someone from corporate was coming by to check on the store,” she says.”I hated that job.”
Abercrombie is currently facing two lawsuits from Muslim employees who weren’t allowed to were their headscarves to work. Can we all just agree to shopping there, please? And thank you.
I’m headed back to Beauty U tonight, so — weather permitting — we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming starting tomorrow.
[Photo via Adrants.]
2 Trackbacks
[...] the only mid-market chain to use frighteningly thin models. (Hi, American Apparel. Hi, Abercrombie.) So it’s hardly surprising that we’ve gotten so numb to this [...]
[...] detail, except to say: I think this is an area with a lot of rather troubling shades of gray. Sure, a clothing store (or spa or anyplace else appearance-oriented) is going to want employees to represent the brand. [...]