After a recent trip to Germany I returned with a challenge: to purchase & send an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt back to my excellent German hosts. This might seem odd, however when you consider that to order a T-shirt direct from the A+F online catalogue & have it sent to Germany (where there are no A+F outlets) worked out at around double the cost, the rationale becomes pretty clear!

This of course meant a trip into London where a friend I hit upon our first problem…finding the flagship store. Knowing the street address as being just off Savile Row we trekked around the block there a few times but to no avail. What made the situation even more infuriating was the abundance of shoppers walking about with A+F shopping bags. Perish the thought that two English men would even consider asking one of these more enlightened shoppers for directions, so we continued to flounder for a good ten minutes more before finally asking somebody – at which point our embarrassment was confounded when we discovered we were standing outside the shop which is, on the outside, completely un-branded! Queue laughter and and further embarrassment at the realisation that my friend & I were clearly not “in the know” here, something that Abercrombie and Fitch expects from its loyal customer base. 

So for better or for worse we made it inside to a truly different shopping experience where everything is so on-brand that one almost feels like an alien in a shop designed for chiseled jocks and beauty queens. See the attached photograph of me with “Insert Name here – Chad maybe?” – a dashingly on-brand chap who also satisfied any appetite any shoppers might have for a fix of faux-celebrity. (I’m the one looking suitably nervous on the right!)

A+F take traditional aspirations of youthfulness and beauty and use it as the cornerstone of their brand – even the shop assistants look as though they had just walked out of the pages of a fashion magazine. As well as standing there looking like wonderfully kempt brand ambassaders their other role was to help navigate confused shoppers round the dark maze that was the shop. Perhaps partly to resemble a nightclub, partly to funnel a vulnerable consumer into making quick purchase decisions the low lighting and strong perfume certainly make the experience a sensual one.

In the end I managed to get the desired T-shirt and it has been sent back to Germany leaving me to post-rationalize the whole experience as one for which I can’t help but feel impressed by. Sure A+F won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but it was refreshing to see branding by way of experience taken so seriously and executed with such aplomb. The brand exudes confidence almost to the point of arrogance but in doing so has created an aura that makes loyal customers in countries that don’t even have outlets.