The early days of Abercrombie and Fitch was absolutely insane

The early days of Abercrombie and Fitch was absolutely insane. Like this style, this branding, the manufacturing was vicious. Like how they shot every campaign was like dreamlike. It was actually like Ralph Lauren level sophistication as far as like the creative and the photography and the campaign, the branding, the marketing was like very, very high level. And if you strip away all the like negative, you know, stuff that they did, the exclusionary acts and all that stuff, and you just look at the branding, marketing and product and like store experience, really almost a 10 out of 10. Especially if you compare this to brands that were, you know, very popular in malls back then, like Gap, you know, Old Navy, American Eagle, etc. These were brands that were struggling and American Eagle were struggling to keep up with this brand. And the chokehold this had on culture, like there is not many brands that could do all of those things and have an attachment to the hip, you know, the youth, like to that level. And then having like a contrarian, you know, controversial campaign style that almost deterred people, especially their in-store experience, almost like it deterred people, truly. Like their customer, you know, um, their customer service wasn't great on purpose. You couldn't even see inside the store. The smell was very specific and loud, yet they were still able to attract, you know, millions of people to their stores every single day and weekend in in general malls, you know, across the aisle from Gap, you know what I mean? Like to to be in that level of branding and marketing and product, you have to be almost genius level. And I don't think the CEO was a great guy or anything like that, but to have that sophistication in brand vision in your photography, your, you know, your website, your store experience, your product, your branding, your design, your clothing design, your styling, to be to this level, it's not normal in any capacity. Like we cannot forget like if you're a creative to pull from this, you should be thinking about brand consistency and like an attachment to your vision, like an unwavering strength of vision that you will execute it no matter what the controversy or what people think. That's when you can build like a cult like audience that like impacts the entire youth of America at that level. It's like, bro, commitment to vision, commitment to the excellence of what you believe your brand standard is and do not waver for a second. Obviously like controversy and photography and aesthetic and then, you know, I'd reference all those things to like the Ralph Lauren business model, but man, you know, Abercrombie was serious at this time.