Today I popped into the new Abercrombie and Fitch, in Savile Row.
It rather reminded me of the nightclub “Heaven” in about 1985. There was some form of what my dad calls “hoodlum music” (i.e. house) playing at top volume. There was a large muscular “boy” standing at the door, with his shirt off. I told him to put some clothes on, and he admitted to feeling rather cold. The lights were so low that it was impossible to see any of the merchandise.
What is odd about the place is that it seems to have pitched itself in a kind of upmarketish, sub-Ralph Lauren-ish way. No doubt this is how it is perceived by the boys and girls who had come up from the Home Counties for the Grand Opening. They’re the key A&F demographic: the ones who moved into UK A&F territory after gay men deserted it, round about five years ago.
That is quite an achievement for A&F which, in the United States, are merely a kind of “carefree college days” themed version of Gap, which occupies the next stage of the lifestyle of beautiful people: the “comfortable suburban existence”.
They also appear to have commissioned a kind of quasi-Nazi style mural on the wall, which looked like this
