There’s a line outside of people waiting to get in, crowd controllers stand over and even though it’s snowing and the temperature is below zero the waiting queue is not deterred. They just pull up their hoodies, tighten their coasts and wait for the slow shuffle forward so they can be on the other side of the velvet rope where a room is filled with beautiful people and the disco house tunes play.
This is the gayest night club experience there is…except it’s not a club, it’s a fashion store.
There may have been a red carpet in the Murray Street Mall for the opening of General Pants Co and on the east coast everyone was camped out for the arrival of Zara but the fashion store we really want to arrive in Australia is Abercrombie & Fitch.
On a trip to New York sure we went to the Statue of Liberty, sure we saw the Empire State Building and we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge but when we got back and we were showing off our holiday snaps those in the know asked us if we’d had the A&F experience.
At the entrance to an Abercrombie and Fitch store you’re greeted by a drop dead gorgeous model, someone with abs and pecs that are a work of art. Inside the room is dark, the house music is pumping and it’s crowded. Shards of light shine down, spot lighting sweaters and polo shirts. The sales assistants, who are phenomenally good looking, as opposed to the door greeters who are ridiculously good looking, bounce around the store keeping in time with the disco beat.
Walking, or more stumbling, around in the darkness of the store you can’t help but feel that buying these clothes would help turn your life into one endless Bruce Webber photo shoot where weekends are filled with friends who spend their time rowing, ambling through the woods and sitting around bonfires on the beach.
Not everyone agrees with my assessment of the A&F experience, a lesbian friend who went to the store in London says it was a frustrating experience. It took her an hour and a half trying to find the store.
Nobody could tell her where it was. Eventually she called home to a male friend in Australia who gave her precise directions. Inside she said the sales people weren’t much help, their attention spans were so short that if you asked them something by the end of a question they’d forgotten what the start of the question was. Personally I think it’s too much to ask people to be unbelievably good looking and have product knowledge.
The General Pants Store opened in Perth after a Facebook campaign drew attention to their absence. Bring on the Abercrombie & Fitch campaign I say. Those wanting to be store ambassadors should head to the gym now.
Photographs by Noel Y. Calingasan
Graeme Watson
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