Abercrombie and Tommy Hilfiger

After reading about the Abercrombie discrimination lawsuit I was reminded of my own families dislike for the Tommy Hilfiger brand. Apparently around the end of the 90s there was a rumor that accused Tommy Hilfiger of being racist and discriminatory towards non Whites. The rumor accused Hilfiger of saying on Oprah's talk show that he didn't want African Americans, Hispanics, Jews, and Asians to buy his clothes. This rumor caught fire and eventually spread to my family who is Jewish. Anytime our family had conversations about clothing or went shopping at J.C. Penney or some other department store my mom would say "we don't buy Tommy Hilfiger, he doesn't like Jews" or something like that. After years of hearing this I have never bought Tommy Hilfiger and I probably never will. Recently in 2007 Hilfiger cleared up the rumor and even hired detectives to find the taping of himself. It was never found, all of this just happened to be a terrible rumor that continued on for years.

Now in relation to the Abercrombie story, I happened to not know that they were being sued for discrimination. I have always felt that the store has projected a very "you must be pretty to wear these clothes" or a "you will look cool and trendy." I never realized how they were discriminating against people of different ethnic backgrounds and races, I always just assumed it was a normal store who happened to hire nice looking people. That's probably because I was never forced to think about race relations in a retail environment or just about race in general. And now that I have learned about how they were trying to enforce a certain agenda I will most likely not shop there anymore. So whether if a corporation is truly discriminating or it is just a rumor we take that information as true. False information ended up hurting Hilfiger and now this true information will end up hurting Abercrombie.

Zachary Lewkowicz
-post 4 jun 9-