Abercrombie and Fitch's ban on shirtless models is unacceptable.

If you describe something as unacceptable, you strongly  pass unfavorable judgment on of it or feel (or express) opposition to (or dislike of) it and feel that it should not be allowed to continue.

They were once a shopping mall staple: parking lots, food court pretzels, ear-piercing stands — and the washboard abs of an Abercrombie & Fitch model. Sometimes plastered across the store’s dimly lit entrance or often on the body of a 17-year-old hired to stand around in swim trunks, sexualized-preppy was the ever-present look of this pricey teen chain.

But now, A&F says it’s ditching shirtless models, its strict policy governing how its employees should dress, and the “appearance and sense of style” rule that was widely known as a directive to its stores to only hire attractive people.

If you’ve been following the story of this once-popular store, this announcement won’t surprise you. CEO Mike Jeffries, the mastermind of the exclusive, racy look, left the company in December. (He once explained his store’s former success to Salon as, “Companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either.”) A discrimination lawsuit from a woman who was denied a job at the store because she was wearing a headscarf went all the way to the Supreme Court. And all the while, sales plummeted.

In short, it’s time for some re-branding.

But it won’t be the first time Abercrombie & Fitch has been in search of a new identity. Have you ever wondered why the brand’s logo was a moose? At its origin, the company was a sporting goods store. “The greatest sporting goods store in the world,” if you were to believe its advertisements from the early 1900s.

Left: A December 1909 Abercrombie and Fitch catalog. Right: An Abercrombie model outside of the store in 2008. (Mark Lennihan/AP)

Long before anyone showed their abs in public, Abercrombie & Fitch was founded in 1892 by David T. Abercrombie and Ezra Fitch. You could wander into their 12-story building on Madison Avenue in New York City to buy golf clubs, binoculars, tents, lawn games, fishing rods, pocket knifes, flasks, clothes made from “safari cloth,” spurs for boots, pipes, smoking jackets and a whole slew of guns.

Rest assured, the store was still “exclusive.” Fitch (who lived in a log cabin on the building’s roof, next to a pool for fishing) gave it the catchphrase, “Where the blazed trail crosses the boulevard.”

Its customers were the thick-walleted and high profile: President Teddy Roosevelt shopped there for a snake-proof sleeping bag before a hunting excursion in Africa. Amelia Earhart wore A&F’s flying jackets. John Steinbeck purchased a horn “with which nearly all cow emotions can be imitated.” The New Yorker went on an Abercrombie shopping spree with Ernest Hemingway, who frequented their floor of firearms. (And he shot himself with a gun he supposedly purchased there.)

But as the Abercrombie of 2015 is learning now, even the most popular store can’t keep up with the cool kids forever. Here’s a snippet of what the Washington Post wrote when the company filed for bankruptcy and closed its Madison Avenue doors in 1977:

It went on for 85 years (a lot longer than the Ritz-Carlton), and, as then president Otis L. Guernsey said in explaining the mahjong craze on which Abercrombie made a killing, “it was a fascinating game; but like everything else, it had its day.”

“What happened to the customers?” fishing tackle salesman Rick Burton said. “They died.”

Abercrombie’s modern customers haven’t died, but they’ve certainly grown up and become more socially conscious. What will the brand do to lure them back to its 900+ stores? (Which will now be better lit, quieter and less-strongly perfumed, by the way.)

“Inevitably, there’s still some people wondering what’s going to happen,” Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Ramsden told Bloomberg. But “things are running along — there’s a clear sense of what needs to be done.”

It took 10 years for the “outfitters” version of Abercrombie & Fitch to be revived by Limited Brands, the Ohio-based company that owns Express and Victoria’s Secret.

PLEASE CLICK THE LINK IN SOURCE 2, I HAD TO SAVE CHARACTER SPACE FOR THE LIMIT.

Fashion sales are in retreat across the UK as clothing purchases come under pressure from tight household finances and the lure of the gym, restaurants and entertainment.

The volume of clothing sold is expected to fall for the second successive year, declining by 0.5% in 2018 after a fall of 0.8% the year before, as the recent woes of Marks & Spencer are reflected across the high street.

M&S expanded its store closure programme to 100 sites this week, with the figures from GlobalData showing that the retailer’s problems are an industry-wide issue.

Women, who account for more than half the UK market and spend more than twice the amount men do on clothing, are cutting down on outfits and prioritising time with friends and family at pubs, restaurants and events, and going to the gym.

“It comes down to the move to the experience economy,” said Richard Lim, an analyst at Retail Economics. “The likes of M&S are struggling to keep their head above water in a declining market with all these structural changes.”

Spending on women’s clothing was down an average 4.1% a month in the first four months of this year, according to Barclaycard. This followed a 2.5% contraction in 2017, when spending on entertainment was up an average 10% and pubs 12%.

Makeup and beauty product sales are on the rise among young women, with many also prioritising paying phone bills, rent and going to the gym.

Click here for relevant graph

Lim says people either want a bargain – turning to the likes of Primark, B&M, Aldi and Lidl – or are seeking rich experiences at higher-end stores such as Ted Baker, Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason.

Pointing to the part of the market where M&S is positioned, he added: “People are shying away from the middle.” As a consequence, GlobalData expects Primark to overtake M&S this year as Britain’s biggest clothing retailer.

The changes in consumer spending are having a painful impact on retail outlets and staff. The M&S closure plan has affected 1,500 jobs so far, with the chain identifying 36 of the 100 stores that will shut over the next four years.

New Look is closing up to 60 of its 593 outlets and House of Fraser is expected to close at least 20 of its 59 stores under a rescue restructure planned for next month.

Some smaller chains, such as East and Bench, have called in administrators while even the previously fast-growing overseas chains H&M and Inditex, the owner of Zara and Massimo Dutti, have been affected. H&M closed six stores in the UK in the first three months of this year as sales stagnated; Inditex shut two last year.

Rising costs from business rates – a monthly tax on commercial properties – and a struggle to adapt to shoppers switching to online buying have affected a variety of retailers. Meanwhile, households’ spare cash has been squeezed by a rise in inflation since the EU referendum, although the pressure on prices has eased in recent months.

Historically, the fashion market has been driven by young people, but and Britain’s millennial generation – people born since 1981– is particularly cost-conscious. They have experienced a bigger reversal in financial fortunes than their counterparts in most other developed countries except Greece.

The Resolution Foundation thinktank found that in 2014, British people born in the years around 1980 earned 13% less than those born around 1970 did at the same stage in life.

Meanwhile, working women appear to be spending less time on fashion and a rapid growth in online spendinghas hit sales in physical stores. Less than a quarter of clothing was bought online last year, a proportion expected to rise to 27% this year, according to GlobalData.

“Shopping with your mates as a social activity, that’s a thing of the past,” said Lorna Hall, insights director at the trend forecaster WGSN. “Women are just meeting up for a coffee, at a gym class or going to an event.”

Hall also pointed to a shift to a less visible market, with young women more likely to trade secondhand clothes online, snap up bargains through services such as the fast-growing mobile phone marketplace Depop as well as eBay and Facebook.

Depop, which is largely based on trading clothes, said sales were up 100% year on year, with an average of 20,000 items a day being bought in the UK by its users, 80% of whom are aged 13-24.

Hall described it as “almost a dark market” in clothing, driven by a greater awareness of waste and sustainability as well as a familiarity with mobile apps not shared by older generations.

It means young people are more willing to “have some stuff for a few weeks and then sell it off and buy more”, Hall said. “It’s almost a dark market, you can’t track it in the same way as retail sales.”

Two decades of importing cheap goods from China have also left the consumer at saturation point, said Lim. “In many ways, we’ve reached an abundance of material possessions and the economic value people are attaching to them is diminishing.”

PLEASE CLICK THE LINK IN SOURCE 4, I HAD TO SAVE CHARACTER SPACE FOR THE LIMIT.

The idea that we can be influenced by ads we don’t consciously detect is one of most intriguing in consumer psychology, and has attracted a lot of attention over the years.  Since the 1950’s people have feared that words or images briefly flashed on a screen or concealed in an advertisement have the power to make us buy certain products or even vote for a certain political candidate.  Are these fears founded, or is this more myth than reality?  The answer, believe it or not is yes and no: While there are widely held false beliefs about subliminal advertising, it can influence us.  In this post I’m going to explain this seeming contradiction, starting with a discussion of what subliminal advertising is and the origin of popular beliefs surrounding it, and then finishing with a discussion of when it actually does influence us.  After reading this, you might start to look at the ice cubes in that liquor ad a little differently…

Subliminal advertising is that making use of words or images (referred to as stimuli) we don’t consciously detect.  Those stimuli can be undetectable because they’re hidden inside of some other image (e.g., concealing the word "sex" in some ice cubes in a liquor ad), or because they’re presented on a screen so briefly we’re not aware we’re seeing them.  How briefly does something have to be presented to be undetectable?  The oft-agreed duration is .003 seconds (that’s three one thousandths of a second).  Most people will not be consciously aware they’ve seen a stimulus that was presented for .003 seconds.  Regardless though of whether a stimulus is considered subliminal because it’s concealed in something else or because it’s presented very briefly, the distinguishing feature is that we’re not aware we’re looking at it.  When subliminal stimuli exert an influence on us it’s said to be an unconscious influence, meaning it’s an influence we’re not consciously aware of.

Distaste for subliminal advertising began in 1957, after James Vicary and Frances Thayer published a study in which they claimed that subliminally presenting the words “Eat popcorn” and “Drink Coca-Cola” in a film increased popcorn sales by 58% and Coca-Cola sales by 18%.  Those are obviously huge sales increases considering all Vicary and Thayer claimed to have done was present a few words on a screen.  The following year, a man named Vance Packard published a book called The Hidden Persuaders, in which he discussed how advertisers could control consumers by appealing to their unconscious desires.  Indeed, Packard’s claims of advertisers’ ability to influence consumers were analogous to a puppet master pulling a puppet’s strings.  After learning about Vicary and Thayer’s study and reading Packard’s book, people feared advertisers could use subliminal advertising to force them to buy products and politicians could even use subliminal advertising to force them to vote a certain way.  People also feared skepticism and suspicion would be useless against this form of influence because after all, we can’t be suspicious of something we’re not even aware we’ve seen.  The fear of subliminal advertising was largely unfounded though, as Packard heavily exaggerated advertisers’ power over consumers, and Vicary and Thayer fabricated their data.  That’s right, they just made it all up for no other reason than to promote Vicary’s own marketing company!  Additionally, legitimate research (i.e., research that did not make use of fabricated data) conducted after the publication of Vicary and Thayer’s study found very little evidence that subliminal advertising exerted any influence on people.  Despite this though, the myth that subliminal advertising has a powerful influence endures: Recent survey data showed over ¾ of respondents knew of subliminal advertising and almost half felt susceptible to it.

If the fear of subliminal advertising is largely unfounded, this begs the question: Can we ever be influenced outside awareness?  The answer, actually, is yes.  Research showed that when words relating to thirst were subliminally presented to thirsty people they later drank more.  This, despite the fact that these people did not report being thirstier!  This implies these people were not only unaware of seeing the thirst related words, but were also unaware of the words’ influence on their behavior.  Other research showed stimuli people were aware of could exert an influence on their behavior they were not aware of.  For example, research showed that liquor store patrons bought more German wine when German music was playing in the store and more Italian wine when Italian music was playing in the store.  When asked what led them to choose the wine they chose very few patrons mentioned the music, implying that despite the fact they could hear the music most of them were unaware it was influencing their behavior.  Other research showed that people who watched someone eating ice cream before being given the chance to eat ice cream themselves would unknowingly eat the same amount of ice cream as that other person (the only time this didn’t happen was when that other person was obese, but that’s a story for another post).

So clearly then, our consumption can be influenced without our awareness, be it due to exposure to stimuli we don’t detect or stimuli we do detect but which influence us outside awareness.  At this point I’d like to address a question that may have occurred to the reader: What’s the difference between the previously mentioned older research that showed no real evidence people could be influenced by subliminal advertising and more recent research that showed we can be influenced outside awareness?  There are two differences, the first of which is that psychologists are now aware that to be effective subliminal stimuli must appeal to current needs and goals.  For example, subliminally presenting thirst related words led people to drink more, when they were already thirsty.  Second, psychologists are now aware that when it comes to stimuli we’re aware of but which influence us outside awareness we must not be aware the stimuli are exerting an influence on us.  For example, if the liquor store patrons hearing the Italian music were told beforehand that the music would lead them to buy Italian wine many of them probably would have chosen wine of a different origin (if any).  Additionally, if the people who imitated another person when eating ice cream were told beforehand that they’d copy that person’s eating behavior they probably wouldn’t have done so.

While a surprising number of people today still subscribe to the idea that subliminal advertising can make us do things against our will, that’s largely just a myth.  Research has shown that subliminal ads and other stimuli designed to influence us outside awareness can do so, but not very powerfully.  I mean, there’s a big difference between getting thirsty people to drink a beverage offered to them and making some presumably well-hydrated moviegoers purchase Coke.  That said, subliminal stimuli and consciously detectable stimuli could influence our behavior without our knowledge when they’re used right.  For instance, one purpose of playing upbeat music in restaurants is to make us eat faster and increase the restaurant’s turnover rate (and by extension its revenues).  Most of us have no idea the music is influencing our eating, and the restaurant staff who are aware would never tell us.  There are a few take away messages from all this: First, you needn’t be concerned that advertisements concealed in movies and TV programs are making you buy things, because at most they could only get you to buy something you’d be inclined to buy anyway, if they could even exert that much influence.  Second, attending to your surroundings might reduce the influence of detectable yet unobtrusive stimuli that could otherwise exert an unidentified influence on your behavior.

Advertising makes us feel that we’re not good enough as we are.

We have an economic system in which people have to make money in order to survive, no matter how manipulative techniques they use to achieve that — and this can be clearly seen in the advertising industry.

To sell you stuff, advertisements first make you feel like crap. How do they achieve this? By showing you what the ideal life is supposed to be, and then making you compare your ordinary live to it. This way they slowly lead you to believe that you’re not beautiful, intelligent, confident, and so on, until they fully convince you that you basically suck. The reason? To make you feel insecure, so that they can then emotionally manipulate you.

Advertising makes us associate happiness with consumerism.

After they’ve achieved to ruin our self-esteem, advertisements are trying to fool us into thinking that only products and services can make us feel better. In other words, advertisements create a problem, and then offer us a solution to it. What is it? You guessed right: Shopping.

Once they achieve to make you feel ugly, they sell you beauty products so you can improve on your ugliness. Once they manage to make you believe that you are not important, they sell you expensive clothes so you can attract the attention of others. And so on and so forth.

In short, advertisements promise you happiness, provided that you spend money in return. The result? Consuming stuff you don’t even need and supporting the production of unnecessary waste that is polluting our planet.

1. It's not the same thing as a government or public institution to decide whether or not a corporation is entitled to continue a policy but rather on how that government maintains itself while also avoiding being a threat to society as a whole and negatively influencing people via their product itself and how it is advertised and/or manufactured.
   
2. A&F's decline in recent times is due to nearly negligible responsibility of the no-shirt ads but rather this was actually a way to mitigate bankruptcy for the company in a dying industry for major competitors across the board.
   

1. It's not the same thing as a government or public institution to decide whether or not a corporation is entitled to continue a policy but rather on how that government maintains itself while also avoiding being a threat to society as a whole and negatively influencing people via their product itself and how it is advertised and/or manufactured.
   
2. A&F's decline in recent times is due to nearly negligible responsibility of the no-shirt ads but rather this was actually a way to mitigate bankruptcy for the company in a dying industry for major competitors across the board.
   

1. "I have often said that I wish I had invented blue jeans: the most spectacular, the most practical, the most relaxed and nonchalant. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes." - Yves Saint-Laurent, French fashion designer
   
2. "Although people often equate them, glamour is not the same as beauty, stylishness, luxury, celebrity, or sex appeal. It is not limited to fashion or film; nor is it intrinsically feminine. It is not a collection of aesthetic markers - a style, as fashion and design use the word." - Virginia Postrel, American political and cultural writer