Abercrombie & who? Exactly

Picture this: You're walking down the street ... oh, let's say you're on 5th Avenue in New York City. Amid the sea of jaywalkers, skyscrapers, and yellow taxi cabs, you see a black-and-white image on a side of a building: the biggest bulge in the biggest pair of jeans you've ever seen.

Got your attention right? Clothing brand Abercrombie & Fitch certainly has a way of doing that -- or at least they did. TIME magazine called them the "World's Worst Recession Brand." While retail stores in general have been suffering during this economic time, it seems like A&F has been hit especially bad.

I remember back when Abercrombie & Fitch topped the poll of favorite clothing brands for a middle school yearbook -- and naive, little, no-name-brand me had never even heard of it.

Oh, how "the mighty" have fallen.

Besides the preppy look not being much in style nowadays, the clothes are, even now, relatively pricey -- definitely not appealing in this day and age when bargains and deals even more important than ever.

Don't worry about A&F too much, though. They still get attention now and then. Sexualized images and the occasional shirtless male model at a storefront may not raise as many eyebrows nowadays (I've seen racier pics from American Apparel), but the brand does still have some notoriety attached to it.

A 19-year-old Muslim woman from Tulsa, Okla. is suing the clothing brand for refusing "to hire Ms. Elauf because she wears a hijab, claiming that the wearing of the headgear was prohibited by its Look Policy." Look Policy is just a euphemism for company dress code.

What's really amazing is that in a statement to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Abercrombie & Fitch said, "Under the Look Policy, associates must wear clothing that is consistent with the Abercrombie brand, cannot wear hats or other coverings, and cannot wear clothes that are the color black."

For a place of employment, dress codes are understandable, but head scarfs, with religious importance attached to them, are quite different than run-of-the-mill baseball caps. Also, here's a question: Is being consistent with the Abercrombie brand having to do with just wearing moose-logoed shirts or being consistent with the image that the brand is selling: Sex?

Here's an even bigger question: What's wrong with black clothes?

(Photo by FaceMePLS)