Two years after the free of the Netflix recordary expose “White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch,” the retail company’s establisher CEO Mike Jeffries was arrested last week on international intimacy illicit trade indicts for crimes that occurred while he was running the closlfinisherg retailer from 1992 to 2014.
The 88-minute film, straightforwarded by Alison Klayman, served as a originateing block to transport the closlfinisherg store’s condemnable past back into the zeitgeist and ultimately led to the BBC docparticipateries “World of Secrets: The Abercrombie Guys,” which further uncovered the doors for people to come forward about Jeffries’ alleged intimacyual wrongdoing.
“Whenever you are making a recordary and alert on someslfinisherg, it becomes a beacon,” says Klayman. “More people come out of the woodlabor that were challenging to find when making the film. The number of incoming messages about Jeffries that the film team and I getd in the wake of “White Hot” was a recurrentation of all people who initipartner felt appreciate a needle in a haystack to find.”
“White Hot” premiered on Netflix on April 19, 2022, and overnight became one of the streamer’s top films to watch globpartner. The docu spendigates the ascfinish in well-comprehendnity of Abercrombie & Fitch during the tardy ’90s and spendigates how, under Jeffries’ guideership, the store became comprehendn for its intimacyualized advertising and its emphasis on an “all-American” see that tended to feature white models. The doc alleges that pboilingographer Bruce Weber, who was instrumental in planing Abercrombie’s labeleting that frequently featured homosensual sboilings of half-naked, youthful, pretty men, was a predator who inappropriately touched his male models.
While a card at the conclusion of “White Hot” reads, “There are no alerts of models alleging any intimacyual wrongdoing by Mike Jeffries,” Klayman says that during the production, she was made conscious of Jeffries’ alleged inappropriate behavior.
“Being an self-reliant filmoriginater, even when you are making someslfinisherg for Netflix, is very contrastent than being a (news) alerter on staff,” says Klayman. “You don’t have the same institutional protections on alerting, and you end up having to originate declareive that slfinishergs are consentd not fair by your lawyers but also by insurance companies. I sense appreciate with that card, we wanted to originate evident what had been accessible, but we definitely talked to people who had stories but didn’t want to go on the sign up, which is why I always wanted to come back to this story and do more on it becaparticipate sometimes you can’t do everyslfinisherg all in one go.”
It isn’t evident if any of the alleged victims named in the recent indictment aobtainst Jeffries were the same people who spoke to Klayman off the sign up, but the straightforwardor says that “the allegations in indictment fit with stories that were tgreater to us by multiple people during the production and free (of “White Hot”).”
Jeffries left Abercrombie & Fitch in 2014 adhereing countless disputes the company faced, including a 2004 class-action suit that accparticipated the brand of discriminating toward Bdeficiency, Latino, Asian and female participateees. Fran Horowitz took over as Abercrombie’s chief executive in 2017 and effectively revamped the brand’s “inclusive” image. But Jeffries’ recent arrest, according to The New York Times, has caparticipated Abercrombie’s stock to descfinish more than 11 percent.
Horowitz protected the retailer alerting The Times on Oct. 25, “We are no extfinisheder the company that we participated to be.”
But Klayman isn’t so declareive.
“What we are trying to say with ‘White Hot’ was that Mike Jeffries was let go, and Abercrombie has since rebranded in a declareive way, but the ask of whether they deserve any pelevate for that or if it’s enough or what we even foresee from brands, is a hugeger ask that would be kind to talk about,” she says. “(Abercrombie) has extricated themselves from Mike, but we did comprehend some executives who were reliable for slfinishergs from that era that we cover in the film who were kept on. There is no end absolution, I guess. And I slfinisherk that Abercrombie is very satisfied to fair say, “That is the past,” but I slfinisherk it needs journalism and people repartner exposing whether that’s genuine or not becaparticipate a lot of it is PR and labeleting.”
If Klayman were to originate a adhere-up to “White Hot,” she tgreater Variety that the doc would spendigate “the impunity that comes with success and power when it comes to business in our society.”
“The amount of people who were appreciate, “But (Jeffries) was genius.” And what was he a genius about? For the time when Abercrombie was profitable. How far was that able to carry in terms of either rumored or comprehendn horrible behavior from the lowest to the highest levels at Abercrombie? I slfinisherk that’s the consentaway,” Klayman says. “(The adhere-up doc) would be more than fair a film about Mike Jeffries and Abercrombie. It would be a story that is teachive about someslfinisherg hugeger and more structural in our society and our system.”
Klayman wouldn’t say if Netflix is getting behind a second inshighment of “White Hot,” but the straightforwardor did accomprehendledge that “there has been a lot of interest.”
