Have you heard the one about the law student with the prosthetic arm who was taken off the sales floor of Abercrombie & Fitch and forced to work in the stockroom because she was breaking the “look policy”? I know! Unbelievable, isn’t it? How did someone with a prosthetic arm get through the doors in the first place?
I went into the store the other day, and it seemed to me that to be an employee you need to be in the top 0.01% of physical specimens on the planet, that is, the top 0.01% as judged by the casting director of an American teen soap set in LA. I was struck by the appearance of the assistants: all model “fit”, with long shiny blonde hair, white teeth, pert breasts and toenail polish in a colour no doubt deemed appropriate by store managers.
This is not merely about modelling the brand in order to encourage sales of denim miniskirts; it’s about selling a perfect all-American image, and for that you need kids with really good genes and, you know, all of their limbs. This is so sick it makes you want to curl up in a corner and suck your thumb. Then again, nobody who shops for clothes out there in the cruel world can claim to be remotely surprised.
Abercrombie & Fitch’s policy appears cold-blooded and ruthless. But it’s not as if fashion is an equal-opportunities employer, eager to welcome all shapes and sizes and colours. Pffff. The entire business hinges on selling an ideal that is out of most people’s reach. It depends on making us feel intimidated, overwhelmed by expectations, comparatively ugly, fat and unappealing. That’s the whole point, because without that anxiety that you aren’t quite good enough, you’d still be wandering around in that great trouser suit you had in the 1990s.
We’re always being told that individuality is the key to style, and, it’s true, you don’t have to be model perfect to pass in a fashion environment. Fashion loves flaws and quirkiness, just so long as your imperfections stay within strict limits. Wonky teeth are cool — in an otherwise exquisite face. Pregnant is gorgeous, but not with water retention. Bald is great, though only with incredible bone structure. Fat is fabulous, if you’re a huge character (basically Beth Ditto). Prosthetics are amazing— that model, Aimee Mullins, with the two wooden legs in the Alexander McQueen show, wow! — but not for... every day.
What happened to Riam Dean at Abercrombie & Fitch is horrible. But for every Riam, there’s the girl with “difficult” skin who doesn’t get the shop-floor job because she doesn’t look regulation cute. And the woman who is told that, no, they don’t have anything in a size 14 because the designer doesn’t make clothes for larger women. And the woman with the average legs who can’t find a dress for the party because all the dresses in the shops end mid-thigh.
The “look policy” extends way beyond the doors of Abercrombie & Fitch — Riam isn’t the only one who’s been made to feel like a freak on Planet Fashion.
