Abercrombie & Fail

has a big yoke of shop on Fifth Avenue. There was a manboy in the foyer with his shirt off, and people were getting photographs taken with his abdomen. The shop smells of perfume, but in a way-too-much kind of way, like a minibus to Aughagower community hall at ten o'clock on a Friday six years ago. I suppose. There's music on that makes it difficult to talk, because of its loudness. Also like Aughagower community hall at ten o'clock on a Friday six years ago. The music is horrible: the vocalist from Aqua ("Come on Barbie, let's go party") may have been heard. The staff are all gorgeous. Like I-need-to-sit-down-and-catch-my-breath gorgeous. Some of them have to stand at the top of flights of stairs dancing and greeting people. One of them said "Hey, how's it going" to me. It was a terrible moment. She should have said "Hey, how's it going?" (rising intonation at the end), but she didn't. It was flat. She'd been told in the office that she had to say that exact thing to customers, so she did. She wasn't asking me anything.

All the customers were plumper and shorter are worse-dressed than the staff. A&F is selling this unattainable dream in a distasteful, yucky way. I'm aware that most clothes (consumer products?) is about selling an aspiration, but I like to think that some of it is about the product itself. If you buy whatever random shape of jeans Topshop is flogging this month, sure, some of the drive behind your purchase is going to be that you want Kate Moss' life, but I'd like to think that it's also because you're focused on looking a certain way; trying out a style. For A&F's consumers, it's not about the clothes; they're just trying to be the staff of A&F and the people in its ads. And that's why I think it's a sorry, sordid mess.