NEW YORK — “I’m not one to normally ever risk having my nipples show unnecessarily,” said the TikToker @itsjust.campbell, “but I figured it’ll look pretty cool.”
The nipple-revealer in question was a crochet shirt by Abercrombie & Fitch, the onetime mall stalwart known for its sexed-up take on Americana and a magazine that paired Bruce Weber images of preppy teen tawdriness with musings by philosopher Slavoj Zizek.
And the creator was not alone in thinking it would “look pretty cool”: This summer, TikTok — and the streets of American cities — are filled with men, millennial and younger, who have made the $100 crochet polo a keystone of their hot-weather wardrobe.
End of carouselThe Crochet-Style Button-Through Sweater Polo, as it is officially called, comes in a multitude of colors: white and orange, cream and blue and yellow, a tightly woven all black, a cornflower blue in a perforated design.
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Although they resemble designs popular in the 1960s and ’70s — which can still be found on sites such as Etsy and eBay — all are made of a combination of cotton and acrylic or viscose, a typical fabrication for fast-fashion pieces and, increasingly, designer goods. Abercrombie may not consider itself fast fashion — and customers are flocking to the brand as an alternative — but there is little to suggest that its materials and design practices differ from those of Shein or Zara, other than the quantity of products made.
On a recent visit to the label’s Midtown flagship, the musky oak scent of the brand’s perfume Fierce no longer clung to the air; there was no shirtless man with washboard abs at the door, enticing and intimidating shoppers like a lacrosse-captain siren. Such previous staples of the Abercrombie shopping experience are now gone, amid shake-ups in the design and C-suite that have amounted to what New York Magazine recently called the “unbranding” of Abercrombie & Fitch, focusing on generic designs in a wide range of sizing, and affordable go-tos such as wedding guest dresses and clothes for the dreaded in-office days of hybrid work schedules.
The market seems to agree: The company’s stock has surged some 245 percent in the past year, Fortune reported in January. In the meantime, the media and brand-savvy consumers, exhausted by and skeptical of the constant rebranding of businesses such as Victoria’s Secret and J.Crew, have been puzzling over how to make sense of the transformation of a company better known for its scandalous designs and imagery and discriminatory hiring practices, detailed in the 2022 documentary “White Hot,” than its successes. Two years ago, writer Hanna Phifer wondered, “Since when did Abercrombie become The Row for people on a budget?”
It may be hard to get your hands on the shirt of the summer: Two colorways were almost sold out in store, and the online stock reflects a similar degree of popularity.
Elliot Duprey, a 23-year-old management consultant from Chicago who provides fashion and styling advice for men on TikTok, described the shirt as “easy to wear” — crucially, for young men who are eager to push the limits of their personal style but are hindered by light insecurity. “What’s acceptable for a straight man to wear?” Duprey mused of men’s thinking. “Especially in Chicago. It’s like, ‘What is no one going to say anything about?’ And like, at this point, [this style] has been around for long enough that it’s become this safe, slutty thing to wear.”
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The shirt is emblematic of two cultural shifts in fashion: one, the aforementioned remaking of Abercrombie from reviled retailer to your high school’s most villainous athletes, to unexpected basics problem-solver, and two, the rise of affordable, mainstream knockoffs of vintage or sustainable styles — pieces that became popular among those reacting against fast fashion’s dominance.
Corey Robinson, chief product officer at Abercrombie & Fitch, wrote in an email that the brand first released the style five years ago in three colorways, “when classic 1950s menswear began trending.” But, Robinson wrote, “overall, the current trends are less preppy, so we’re seeing more success with our sweater polos than with our traditional pique polo.”
“The response from our customers has been incredible, and we have greatly expanded our choices to be a key part of our menswear assortment today.” Search “abercrombie crochet shirt” on TikTok, and you’ll find countless guys giving it a spin. Most wear it layered over a plain cotton T-shirt or tank top, though several also try it without the underlayer. One man tries it over a black shirt, and then, through the magic of TikTok’s editing tools, appears to tug at the shirt and make it disappear, his bare chest peeking out between the shirt’s woven meanders. Spicy!
Duprey still associates Abercrombie with its mall heyday — in our video interview, he was, incidentally, wearing a shirt riddled with oddball-shaped holes, by the John Waters-favorite Comme des Garçons, layered over a T-shirt — but he said he sees a number of shoppers searching for copies of clothes that look sustainable, or vintage. “A brand like Todd Snyder, which I really like, is also making these crochet polos,” he said. “But [Abercrombie] is taking it to a fast-fashion level, where it’s this very safe zone. They tell you what to buy and what to style it with on their website.”
While generations of consumers have had a distaste for knockoffs, whether because of the monetary, social or intellectual cheapness of such pieces, Gen Z and millennials see them as “dupes,” which position copies as harmless, a hack or a score.
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The date at which the shirt was first introduced also points to the thinking behind Abercrombie’s strategy. It was in 2019 that the New York-based brand Bode began to take off, winning the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s Emerging Designer of the Year award. Crochet polos, some made from reused textiles, others from new fabrics, have been a staple of the brand, which designer Emily Adams Bode Aujla has stated was created to help men think of their clothing as heirlooms, or pieces to wear and repair for decades. Her shirts are more than six times the price of Abercrombie’s. Many are sold out.
The same year that Bode began its hold on menswear, Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time In Hollywood” was released, unleashing a zest of zaddy-ish early-1960s styles. That trend was further cemented in a number of photoshoots — of football player Christian McCaffrey and actors Brad Pitt and Steven Yeun — in GQ styled by longtime menswear whisperer George Cortina, which emphasized a sexy, sleazy-hunk breed of masculinity with a touch of contemporary sensitivity. (Last year, the magazine even published a shoppable guide to wearing crochet polo shirts). In the meantime, vintage shopping has experienced an explosion in popularity, as shoppers tired of fast fashion’s low quality and middling designs — making the look of something old all the more appealing. By text message, Cortina said that he likes the crochet and knit tops for “their age and patina,” adding that they are also “v. photogenic.”
As Robinson put it, “Our designers get their inspiration for our products by staying close to our customers and following their styling needs and trends.” Most brands do this, of course: Countless designers (including Bode) employ specialists to source vintage pieces as inspiration, and many vintage stores, especially those in New York and Los Angeles, make additional revenue by renting out their pieces to designers who use them as source material for future designs.
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But the timing here — a period of five years from indie designer creation, cinematic and magazine mythmaking and the boom in vintage — is most revealing. Duprey calls it “the cerulean sweater trickledown,” referencing the monologue from “The Devil Wears Prada” in which a magazine editor traces a high runway collection to a discount bin sweater. Abercrombie has concentrated much of its energy on sending products to influencers who have a smaller number of followers, a tactic deployed by fast-fashion brands such as Shein and Fashion Nova. That may make style seem more accessible, but it also removes shoppers further and further from the source material — whether that’s a well-designed (but extremely expensive) shirt, or a moment of vintage or film imagination.
As fast fashion’s clutches tighten around more and more businesses, we get further from the sources of real style. But perhaps we are too precious about style. These days, most of us just want to wear a spiffy-looking shirt without having to watch several movies and listen to a bunch of albums to figure it out.
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