Mediocre yet interesting enough.
More importantly, much of it was news to me.
A&F imploded in my 40s, so I was never its target demographic and only darkened one once. Way too much cologne going on in there, to say nothing of the fact that I have been to a mall maybe a dozen times in 25 years.
Anyhoo, it's a serviceable morality tale, but perhaps more intriguing is the story as a business case. What comes of a company built on exclusivity when it's forced (by a court-appointed 'monitor') to abandon that strategy? Failure, apparently.
They had a grubby, devil-may-care culture and violated employment law, so that's on them.
But in terms of marketing and advertising, being "everything to everyone" leads to meaning "nothing to no one."
Fashion (by, ahem, 'design') is a fickle mistress with the life expectancy of a fruit fly, so tinkering with one's recipe too much, as A&F was forced to do, amounts to corporate seppuku.
#peaceout
