By his own standards, sixty eight year old Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries is probably much too unattractive to work in his own stores now. But his incendiary comments about why no plus sizes can be found in his flagship stores has enraged actress Kirstie Alley, who has publicly struggled in the past with her own weight issues.
An interview Jeffries gave to Salon about how he cultivated the A&F image enraged Alley this week. 'A lot of people don’t belong in our clothes, and they can’t belong,' Jeffries told Salon in 2006 in an article that finally went viral this week.
'Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those 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.'
The Fat Actress star told the Huffington Post she won't allow her children to shop at A&F because of the store's blatant policy of discrimination.
'I just heard about this guy from Abercrombie & Fitch today. This dude from Abercrombie & Fitch - he's the CEO - what a [expletive]!' Alley thundered.
'He says Abercrombie clothes are for people that are cool and who look a certain way and are beautiful and who are thin and blah, blah, blah,' she continued. 'He goes on and on and on. That would make me never buy anything from Abercrombie even if I was cool and thin. I got two kids in that age bracket that will never walk in those doors because of his view of people.'
Alley isn't the only celebrity to slam Jeffries egregiously insulting comments. Sophia Bush also expressed her dismay over the comments, tweeting: 'Such a letdown to see that Abercrombie, a company geared toward teens, lets their CEO speak like this.'
Then on Tuesday, a video campaign dubbed #FitchTheHomeless went viral on Twitter. In the video, Los Angeles-based writer Greg Karber hands out A&F clothing he found at thrift stores to the homeless living along LA's Skid Row.
The video, uploaded on Monday, has since received over 4.2 million views but some critics contend that this angry response to Jeffries comments is as reactionary and wrongheaded as the views that inspired it.
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