A&F going to the dogs, local says

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Deidre Stammers, a Baldwin resident and the owner of Glory Beezzz thrift store on Merrick Road, was so outraged by comments by Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries that she decided to take a stand: She is turning all the Abercrombie merchandise in her collection into pet beds.

A Business Insider article that recycled 2006 comments from Jeffries in a profile has sparked an imbroglio. In the interview, Jeffries seemed to celebrate his company’s clique-y perception of its core clientele. “A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes],” he said. “They can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

Jeffries seemed to make it clear that the type of people Abercrombie & Fitch targets is reflected in its models and the posters that adorn its stores. “We hire good-looking people in our stores,” he said, “because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people.” He added that this is why the company does not carry clothing larger than size L.

Glory Beezzz all abuzzz
When Stammers heard about Jeffries’s comments, she said, she was shocked. “I have little kids, preteens and younger, who own a lot of Abercrombie,” she said. “But I don’t want to encourage them to feel those comments are acceptable. I saw it and thought, how horrible!’”

Disgusted, Stammers decided to purge the thrift shop of all Abercrombie merchandise. “I started throwing it all out,” she said, “but then I realized that’s what he wanted people to do. I decided that there was a way I could reverse all of this bad energy.”

Sleep on it
Stammers’s children pointed her to a YouTube video featuring a man who gathered Abercrombie merchandise from Los Angeles thrift stores and distributed it to the
homeless. Then she came up with her own idea: She would turn all her merchandise from the company into dog beds.

After collecting all of the Abercrombie clothing from her store — and their own closets — Stammers and her kids sought donations from friends and neighbors. “The community gave tons of support,” she reported.

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