Fitch the Homeless

As the mother of a preteen girl, I am very aware of trends and imaging and branding, etc.  My daughter is a normal, average preteen girl.  She loves fashion and hair and nails and shoes and boys and all things girlie.  As a result, she has a love of most stores at Crocker Park including, but not limited to, Abercrombie & Fitch.

The other day, I stumbled upon an interview with A&F's CEO, Mike Jeffries.  As I read the interview, I felt my blood pressure going up.  I could not believe what I was reading.  Now, I am all for shoot-from-the-hip blatant honesty but this?  This was absolute ignorance, at best.  The interview can be found here, and discusses why A&F won't carry XL women's clothes.  I seriously get angry just writing about this.  At the moment I finished reading this article, I vowed to not give this, ok I'll censor this, this CEO another penny of my money.  My daughter, wanting to have the stuff all her friends were wearing, has some A&F clothes and she isn't happy to have to part with them, but this is way too valuable a lesson.

As this all goes down, bring in Greg Karber.  I stumbled upon his video on Huffington this morning and was fueled to do something.  Greg went to his local thriftshop to acquire some A&F clothing which he then distributed to the local homeless on Skid Row.  I have since started to see the oped pieces pop up like crazy on the internet, defying this movement.  Stating we are belittling homeless people by doing this.  I am not sure how "anti A&F CEO cool kid only" you can get then some who lives a life that is completely 180 degrees away from Mr. Jeffries target market.  People who are homeless need clothes, I have clothes I do not want anymore that happen to be A&F, I donate said clothes to said people and two problems solved.  Oh, and Mr. Jeffries whole purpose for being, being part of only the "cool, in crowd" foiled - at least a bit.

I love fashion, styles, etc., too.  I am far, far, far from the stereotypical A&F target market.  I am lucky to get a pair of jeans in there past my thighs.  And I am not overweight.  I get product branding, we all do.  Growing up in Parma, we had a store at the mall called 5,7,9 - they marketed towards girls who were those sizes and smaller.  Suffice to say, I didn't shop there because my teen years pushed me past the size 9.  But they didn't come forward and say we do this so uncool, overweight girls won't wear our clothes.

To that end, I will be taking Gab's A&F clothes (as much as she doesn't want me to) and donating them to a homeless shelter in Cleveland.  If they wear them and they stay clothed, great, if they use them for rags, great.  I just don't want my daughter feeling she has to be a size she is not naturally supposed to be to fatten the wallet of some pea brained CEO who obviously sniffed too much fabric glue.  As a woman who has struggled with weight and body image my whole life, this is beyond reprehensible to me.

We have a FaceBook group set up to spread the word and have three points to drop off donations if you would like to get rid of your things, too.  

If people are more offended at clothing the homeless with clothes we don't want then they are at padding the wallet of this guy, well, ya look good in your A&F clothes folks ;-)