The early 2000s were a weird time for fashion. If you walked into a mall in 2002, you couldn't escape the smell of Fierce cologne. It was everywhere. Abercrombie & Fitch was basically the king of the high school cafeteria. But beneath that "cool kid" aesthetic, things were getting incredibly messy. People often forget just how blatant it was. We aren't just talking about a lack of diversity in catalogs. We’re talking about Abercrombie and Fitch racist shirts that actually made it onto the shelves and stayed there until the public literally forced them off.
It’s easy to look back and think it was just a different time. It wasn't. Even then, the backlash was swift. People knew it was wrong. But the company, led by Mike Jeffries, seemed to lean into the controversy like it was a badge of honor.
The 2002 Asian Caricature Controversy
Let’s get into the specifics of the 2002 incident because it’s the one most people remember when they think about the brand's downfall. Abercrombie released a line of T-shirts featuring caricatures of Asian men. One of the most infamous designs featured a fictional laundry service called "Wong Brothers Laundry Service: Two Wongs Can Make It White."
The shirts featured slanted eyes and conical hats.
It was a total disaster.
The company's defense was basically that they thought the Asian community would love them. Seriously. A spokesperson for the brand at the time, Hampton Carney, actually told the Associated Press that they thought the shirts were "humorous" and "cheeky." They claimed they were trying to celebrate the humor of the culture. Obviously, that's not how it landed.
Asian American student groups at Stanford and UC Berkeley didn't find it funny. They organized protests. They called for boycotts. The 18-to-22-year-old demographic—the exact people Abercrombie was desperate to keep—started to push back hard. Within days, the company pulled the shirts. About 100 different designs were yanked from 311 stores. But the damage to the brand's reputation was already permanent.
Beyond the Wong Brothers: A Pattern of Exclusion
The shirts weren't a one-off mistake. They were part of a much larger corporate culture. You sort of have to look at the whole picture to understand why those designs were approved in the first place. This was a company that famously had a "look policy." They didn't just want their clothes to be a certain way; they wanted their employees to look like they stepped out of an Ivy League rowing club brochure.
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And that look was overwhelmingly white.
In 2003, just a year after the shirt scandal, the company was hit with a massive class-action lawsuit (Gonzalez v. Abercrombie & Fitch). The plaintiffs? People of color who claimed they were steered toward back-of-house jobs like stocking or cleaning, while white employees were put at the front of the store. The lawsuit alleged that managers were told to hire "classic American" looks.
The settlement was huge.
Abercrombie ended up paying $40 million to several thousand minority and female applicants and employees. They also had to hire a Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion. You’d think that would be the end of it, but the brand’s identity was so tied up in this idea of "exclusionary cool" that change was slow. Like, really slow.
Other Designs That Missed the Mark
It wasn't just the Asian caricatures. There were other Abercrombie and Fitch racist shirts and culturally insensitive designs that popped up over the years.
- The "Irish I Were Drunk" Shirt: This one played into every negative stereotype about Irish people. It wasn't as widely reported as the 2002 scandal, but it definitely added to the "frat bro" toxicity.
- The West Virginia Incident: They once sold a shirt that said "It's All Relative in West Virginia," which was a direct dig at the state's population using incest tropes.
- Gymnastics Graphics: Some shirts featured slogans about female athletes that many found degrading or sexist, further narrowing the "A&F girl" into a very specific, often problematic, stereotype.
Why These Shirts Actually Got Made
How does a multi-million dollar corporation let something like "Two Wongs Can Make It White" get past a legal team? Or a marketing head? Or even a junior designer?
Honestly, it comes down to the leadership. Mike Jeffries, the CEO from 1992 to 2014, was very open about his philosophy. In a 2006 interview with Salon, he famously said: "In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids." He admitted the brand was exclusionary. He wanted it to be elite. When the CEO has that mindset, the creative teams feel empowered to push boundaries that shouldn't be pushed.
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They weren't trying to be inclusive. They were trying to be "edgy."
But there’s a massive difference between being edgy and being bigoted. The company confused the two for over a decade. They thought controversy equaled "buzz," and for a while, it did. Their sales grew even as the protests mounted. But eventually, the cultural zeitgeist shifted. Gen Z grew up, and they weren't interested in a brand that felt like a relic of a less tolerant era.
The Long Road to Rebranding
If you walk into an Abercrombie today, it’s a completely different world. It’s almost unrecognizable. The windows aren't shuttered anymore. The music isn't deafening. The lighting is actually... bright?
The rebranding started in earnest around 2017 under new CEO Fran Horowitz. They had to systematically dismantle everything Jeffries built. This meant changing the sizing (which used to be notoriously tiny), changing the marketing, and most importantly, making sure Abercrombie and Fitch racist shirts never happened again.
They pivoted to "inclusive" and "authentic." It worked.
The company saw a massive resurgence in 2023 and 2024. They started focusing on things like the "Curve Love" denim line, which caters to different body types. It’s a complete 180 from the days when Jeffries said he didn't want "fat people" wearing his clothes.
The Netflix Documentary Effect
In 2022, Netflix released White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch. This documentary brought all the old scandals back into the public eye. It interviewed former employees and models who talked about the discrimination they faced.
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For many younger shoppers, this was the first time they heard about the "Wong Brothers" shirts. It served as a stark reminder of how much the fashion industry has changed. It also forced the brand to be transparent about its past. They didn't try to hide it; they acknowledged the mistakes and pointed to their current diversity initiatives.
What We Can Learn From the A&F Era
The story of the Abercrombie and Fitch racist shirts isn't just about bad T-shirt designs. It’s a case study in corporate hubris. It shows that while a brand can build a massive empire on exclusion, that foundation is incredibly brittle.
Culture changes.
What was "cheeky" to a group of executives in 2002 was offensive to millions. The lag time between the public's outrage and the company's actual change in heart took nearly 15 years and a change in leadership.
Actionable Takeaways for Modern Consumers
If you're looking at brands today and wondering if they've actually changed, here's how to evaluate them:
- Look at the Board, Not Just the Ads: It's easy to put a diverse group of models in a photoshoot. It's much harder to change the executive suite. Check if the leadership reflects the diversity they preach.
- Research the History: Documentaries like White Hot are great, but you can also search for past litigation. Most major brands have some history of labor or discrimination issues; what matters is how they settled and what they've done since.
- Support Transparency: Brands that admit to past failures—like the current A&F leadership does regarding the Jeffries era—are generally more trustworthy than those that try to scrub their history from the internet.
- Vote With Your Wallet: The 2002 boycott of Abercrombie worked. It forced the company to pull products. Consumer pressure is the only thing that truly shifts corporate policy when internal ethics fail.
The legacy of those shirts remains a dark spot in fashion history. It’s a reminder that "cool" is subjective, but respect is non-negotiable. Abercrombie survived, but only by killing off the version of itself that thought those shirts were a good idea in the first place.