Moose vs Eagle: A Competition for the Pseudo Teen Identity
Yes, it’s that time of year again, Christmas in the early 2000s. Snow is falling, Christmas decorations are going up, holiday shopping is beginning, and people are making their wish lists from their favorite stores’ holiday catalogs. Teenagers procrastinate studying for their finals as they peruse their favorite brands’ catalogs, marking off the coolest baggy, boot cut jeans and listening to Green Day CDs (as recommended by Abercrombie & Fitch’s Quarterly). But, who will win this year’s competition when placing your order? As you sit by the fire browsing the dozens of Fair Isle sweaters that grace the pages of the season’s A&F Quarterly and American Eagle Outfitters catalog, you realize a crucial decision must be made. Which icon will you pick to represent your identity: Moose or Eagle? The emblem that you choose to have stitched to your new, “vintage” polo will come to define your life and identity for the new year. The narratives created through the journal-esque pages of these catalogs serve as a template for the ideal teenage lifestyle, and the backdrops to these scenes create a glorified vision of youth, which then becomes commodified in the $89.50 sweater. The narrative structures of the A&F Quarterly and the American Eagle catalog serve to depict the ideal youthful body and the environment it inhabits and commodify identity in a postmodern sense, thus making youth and identity available for purchase and allowing youths to assume hyperreal pseudo identities by purchasing membership into these lifestyle brands, rather than creating an identity for themselves.
This essay aims to examine the narratives centered around the concept of youth that are constructed in the holiday catalogs presented by Abercrombie & Fitch and American Eagle Outfitters. In it, I will compare and contrast the 2000 Christmas Issue of the A&F Quarterly, A Very Emerson Christmas and the American Eagle Outfitters Holiday Catalog, Ultimate Gift Guide, produced under the Creative Director Brian Franks and the Designer Adam Flanagan. The essay will begin with a textual analysis of the personal journal-like narratives constructed through text and image, along with how the catalog structure influences these narratives. I will then look at the emphasis placed on the physical body by Abercrombie & Fitch and the constructed environments present both in the A&F Quarterly and more prominently in the American Eagle catalog. The essay will then examine the similar goals but distinct approaches of both companies through a case study on a lawsuit posed by Abercrombie on American Eagle for copying their trade dress and image of “cool.” The essay will then move into an examination on the fabrication of teen identity in relation to the catalogs. Finally, I will look at how lifestyle brands, like Abercrombie and American Eagle, allow for an imitation of image, creating a postmodern pseudo identity and a hyperreality.
Both the 2000 Christmas Issue of the A&F Quarterly, A Very Emerson Christmas, and the American Eagle Outfitters Holiday Catalog, Ultimate Gift Guide aim to create a personal, journal-like styled narrative of college-aged adolescents returning home for the holidays. The A&F Quarterly, which tracks the personal story of the Emerson family, begins with an introduction written allegedly by Bryan Emerson, rather than the traditional letter from the editor. Bryan Emerson states that the journey the reader is about to be taken on is “just another bout of Christmas chaos with the Emersons…” (A&F Quarterly 3). The editor then goes on to explain that in this issue Abercrombie & Fitch decided to spend Christmas with the Emerson family and that the reader will “follow the Emersons through [Bryan Emerson’s] scrapbook” (A&F Quarterly 3). This introduction to the magalog sets the stage for the personal, journal-like narrative presented by the company. The reader is to believe that the photos and captions through the piece are the work of Bryan Emerson himself, rather than the fashion photographer and copywriter. This approach to the narrative attempts to create a feeling of authenticity. As the reader follows the family through clambakes, multiple “boxers only” themed Christmas parties, polo matches, and a double wedding featuring a lesbian couple, he feels connected to a real story even though it is composed of posed images.
American Eagle similarly strives for a personal journal or scrapbook-like feel of the college student returning home for the holidays. The catalog designer, Adam Flanagan, describes the narrative behind the images of the catalog:
“The photographic story was about a group of college kids getting together in Brooklyn over the holidays. It starts with them reuniting after being off at college for the fall, then they exchange gifts and have a dinner party, later taking their party out on the town.”
The images trace the defined narrative. However, the story is not as strong as the story in the A&F Quarterly. None of the American Eagle models are identified by name, making them seem less real, but possibly allowing the reader to imagine himself in the model’s environment. This is unlike the A&F Quarterly, where the models seem to have an exclusive club, body, and lifestyle that the reader can only aspire to achieve through the purchase of the brand. The American Eagle catalog does, however, similarly strive to create a personal scrapbook feel like the A&F Quarterly. Flanagan explains that the team “made the catalog look like an old journal, and went as far as making some of the photos look like old snapshots being held into the book with antiqued photo-corners.” This detail again adds to the personal and authentic feel of the narrative.
The general arch of both narratives appeals to the teenage audience that is being marketed to by both companies. Abercrombie’s narrative tracks the Emerson kids returning home from college for Christmas and throws in little “cool” personal details, like Whitney’s photo shoot for her art class, Charlie’s pet duck that serves as his fraternity’s mascot, Adam’s private party at a local pub, and the double wedding. Of course, the pages are also strewn with alcohol and nudity, creating an ideal story of what every teenager is constructed to want. American Eagle follows a similar narrative of a group of kids returning home from college. This narrative, however, has been simplified and tamed. The narrative is general and no “personal” details are given about the models. The story consists of a Christmas party and an after party “out on the town.” The alcohol and nudity are absent from this story, but implications of strong bonds of friendship and fun that every teenager desires are very much present. These narratives portray parties and, for the most part, an unsupervised teenage Christmas experience. Adults are completely absent from the American Eagle catalog, and while the Emerson parents are present in the A&F Quarterly, they are portrayed as members of this youth culture or at least enablers to their children’s party lifestyle. The mother holds a drink in every photo she appears in, and in one caption she is referred to as “Mom and her ever-present celebratory refreshment,” as if it is an extension of her persona (A&F Quarterly 271). The father is described to have “stumbled around with his big beer-soaked grin, mucking it up like he was still one of the boys” over the holiday (A&F Quarterly 3). Thus, the parents are not portrayed as authority figures, ensuring the continuation of the teen-only party narrative.
The narratives structure both catalogs. However, the catalog structure in turn structures the narratives and how they unfold. To start, both companies go after and target the teen market. Catalog consultant Andy Russell comments on the release of two other teen branded catalogs in the 2000s: “The teen marketplace is a logical place for them to go, especially when it’s so hard to find prospects these days” (qtd. in M.D.F). During 2001, 40 million Americans were between the ages of 10 and 19 and spent 125 billion dollars of their own money (M.D.F.). This explains why companies geared brands to teens and put out catalogs to appeal to the visual nature of these millennials. And, it proved to be successful; Abercrombie’s revenue increased from $50 million in 1992 to $1.5 billion in 2001 after the release of the magalog (Chittenden 80). The catalogs’ narratives are also diverse and complex. The viewer is not simply presented with pictures of empty clothes and prices, but is engaged in a constructed story of what one can do while wearing these clothes. In the case of Abercrombie’s “magalog” one is also presented with lifestyle articles about what’s cool to listen to and to read, adding another layer to what is entailed in buying into this brand. The catalog structure has changed from simply being a list of items for sale to being “sleeker, more lifestyle-oriented and focused on getting you online” (York). Both American Eagle and Abercrombie focus heavily on lifestyle and how an individual can “live their life” (American Eagle’s slogan) and less on each item offered. As seen in Figures 1 and 2, it is evident by the abbreviated color swatches and prompt to go online that the catalogs are intended to place less emphasis on each individual product and more on “represented dreams and wishes during the holidays” (qtd. in York). The goal is to sell the narrative rather than the clothing.
This narrative, as presented in the A&F Quarterly, is heavily focused on the physical body, ironically the unclothed body. The images in the magalog feature a great deal of nudity and positions that signify sex, painting the picture of “frolicking models, draped in nearly as much eroticism (hetero and homo) as they are in sweaters” (qtd. in Chittenden 85). And indeed, in Figure 3 the viewer can see sexually posed models in the wet grass with the man’s sweater draped carefully over his exposed abs. But why does Abercrombie associate their clothing with sex and the distinctly toned body iconic to its models? Chittenden explains through Bourdieu’s field theory, where field “defines differentiated positions within a particular social arena,” that “the field of teen sexuality is one where fashion and the appearance of the teen body (and its acceptance) is a critical part of sexual identity” (Chittenden 82). Thus, Abercrombie presents the ideal picture of teenage sexual identity to its readers in the A&F Quarterly and forges the association that this identity can be purchased and achieved through the wearing of its clothing. In terms of readership and the viewing practices of the magalog, Abercrombie plays with the teen gaze, where “teens imagine themselves as the models, whereby the purchase of Abercrombie & Fitch clothes will win them the rewards experienced by the models in the images” (Chittenden 84). These rewards can range from the elite experiences, like shirtless horseback riding seen in Figure 4, to the simple desire for sex.
Chittenden goes on to explain that “it is significant that the clothes themselves are kept ‘hidden’... [to] preserve the illusion of fashion as lifestyle: Abercrombie & Fitch do not create and make clothes, they manufacture a lifestyle,” a large part of it centering around sex (84). The clothes in Figure 5 are kept very hidden. The image features the Abercrombie model, Adam Emerson, seductively positioned under the Christmas tree among presents wearing nothing but boots, an A&F wristband, and a blanket draped over his waist. The image is obviously not selling clothing because no clothing appears in the scene. The image is selling sexual identity and desire framed through the Abercrombie aesthetic. The model positioned under the tree paired with the caption “Adam almost unwrapped” signifies sexual desire and attractiveness that has been commodified and conveniently made available for sale by Abercrombie & Fitch. The model’s offscreen gaze implies an out of frame figure, who will presumably “unwrap” the model and complete the narrative of the sexually active teen lifestyle. Abercrombie has succeeded in manufacturing an attractive lifestyle that can in turn be signified through its clothing and mark one’s identity in the field of teen sexuality.
Figure 5, however, does complicate established gender roles, which may intrigue and be found desirable by young progressive audiences. Advertising plays a role in dictating social norms and “serves as the primary lexicon of gender images, responsible for the wide dissemination of currently relevant masculine and feminine imagery” (Stern 216). The image features a nude man posed in an effeminate and vulnerable sexual position, rather than a dominating masculine position that has been established through other ads and seen as common for the male gender role. The model is posed to be leaning back with his chest elevated and his legs spread out, with only a blanket to cover him. This vulnerable pose is typically enacted through female models, and it is striking to see a male posed in a sexually passive position given the other media images of the decade. The model’s offscreen gaze also indicates that the viewer out of frame holds the dominant position. For both the off-frame viewer and the catalog reader there is a “role reversal in the gaze, in which a near-naked man is the object of the sexual gaze, and men and women are presumed to be gazers” (Stern 224). This complicates the traditional power dynamic, where men were presumed gazers and not the subject of the gaze. This play with gender roles, that is subtle and not directly stated in the image, also helps to create a rebellious sexual identity that is appealing to a youthful market.
While Abercrombie tends to place a greater emphasis on the physical, often naked, body, American Eagle’s catalog steps back to give a wider view of the environment in which the body is present and surprisingly depicts clothed bodies to sell clothing. Figure 6 shows an image in the American Eagle catalog that is framed to cut off the model’s face and legs and only focus on the blouse she is wearing. Here, the shirt becomes the sole focus of the photo, whereas in Figure 7 Abercrombie creates a similarly framed image but the model is shirtless. Abercrombie takes a different strategy, highlighting what is underneath the clothes, and exposes the abs and chest of its model rather than covering him with one of their tee shirts. While the A&F Quarterly does place its models in interesting environments and settings, the focus of the images becomes the body and the environment is either largely excluded from the frame or simply becomes an unnoticed background that serves solely as a vehicle for the models to exist. American Eagle’s catalog, on the other hand, aims to construct a physical and social environment that communicates the values of their brand to the consumer, who can then envision themselves enacting these values in a similar, real life space.
Figure 8, from the American Eagle catalog, frames the models from a long shot. This framing reveals the models’ entire bodies and much of the environment around them. The living room environment is a warm and traditional styled space with dark wood floors, white walls, antique furniture, and black and white photos. This space fosters feelings of nostalgia and supports the idea of a warm and traditional holiday season created in the catalog. The viewer is able to imagine himself in the space because he is given enough visual clues as to what the space entails. It is also possible to say that the viewer could imagine himself taking the photo of the models as if he was taking a picture of his own friends. The photo is taken from a slight high angle and the models are casually posed, implying that the photographer was standing above the seated models and that the picture is a more candid snapshot at a party rather than the product of a photoshoot. The models also look directly into the camera, thus acknowledging the viewer and inviting him into the space they occupy. Figure 9 shows a similar image of a group portrait from the A&F Quarterly. This image, unlike the photo from American Eagle, is framed as a medium shot and it zoomed in much closer to the models. The models are, for the most part, only visible from the waist up and completely fill the frame. The environment is impossible to picture because the only visible part of it is darkened. This places all the emphasis on the models themselves, whose faces are perfectly lit. The composition of this image distances the viewer and eliminates the possibility of picturing himself in the same environment as the models. He is left to only aspire to their perfect bodies in hopes of joining this elite group, who by refusing to look into the camera directly refuse to accept and acknowledge the viewer.
In the American Eagle catalog, environments are constructed to convey and elicit certain values and emotions. While the photographer did not construct a building for the shoot, the choices made of where to shoot and how to compositionally construct the space build a visual representation that serves to signify the brand. The selection of architectural elements in the photos stems from the idea that “buildings have been understood to symbolize good taste, power, and status” and that these traits come to be associated with American Eagle (Kirby and Kent 432).
Figures 10 and 11 are two images from the catalog where the environment dominates. Figure 10 is shot in a foyer with three distinct planes: a foreground, midground, and background. The use of these planes forces the viewer to look through the entire space. The figures in the foreground and background are out of focus and blurred, which draws most of the attention to the midground, where the largest area of the environment happens to be located. This space features wood paneled walls, black and white checkered floors, garland on the stair rail, and a red front door. All of these elements signify a traditional home of good taste, which elicits feelings of tradition, americana, and nostalgia: all positive traits associated with the American Eagle brand.
In Figure 11, the viewer is forced to look through and past the environment, which takes center stage, to see the models positioned in the back of the composition. The main elements of the environment, the chandelier and table setting, are placed in the foreground of the photo, framing the models in the midground. While these environmental elements frame the models, they also overpower them in size. The chandelier is the largest element in the frame and demands most of the attention. This element connotes wealth, as does the elaborate table setting graced with numerous candles, which helps to establish the status of the brand and justify the price of clothing. The models are highlighted by the lighting scheme of the photo and given a significant amount of attention, however, they are still overpowered by the space. The room has very high ceilings that are emphasized by the mirror and bookshelf in the background, causing the models to appear small. This emphasis on environment over model is very different than the strategy of Abercrombie, which always makes sure to have its models as the dominant focus in the frame.
One crucial element in the fabrication of environment is to make it look natural or believable and not posed or constructed. Here I am going to relate the catalog to Prickett’s article on the photo sharing app, Instagram. Even though Instagram was developed after the years these catalogs were printed, the same goal of creating an environment to induce longing is applicable. In these photos, “all elements must be carefully staged to look happenstance” (Prickett). In Figure 12, the girl walks out of a cab into the snow in mid stride. As she clutches her American Eagle coat, she is not meant to look posed, but caught in her action by chance, giving a more authentic feel to the image. The same concept of happenstance applies to Figure 13 with the guy stringing lights around the room. His appearance looks caught in the moment. He is not even looking into the camera, but is focused on the environment of the room. The natural happenstance of the models in their environments form a desirable window into the presumed lives of these individuals, all with their American Eagle clothing. These “belongings being so easily conflated with belonging…[induce] a longing to be on a scene, the scene, the next one, a better one” (Prickett). The viewer desires to be a part of the scene, to belong, and the clothing signifies the pass to gain access into the fabricated world presented by the catalog.
While both companies take different approaches in the portrayal of their brand, Abercrombie focusing on the physical body and American Eagle on the environment, both catalogs do have a similar style of “cool.” So much so that Abercrombie filed suit in Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc. v. American Eagle Outfitters, Inc. in 1999 “alleging that defendant intentionally copied its trade dress and promotional and marketing materials” (Abercrombie). After the court dismissed the action an appeal was filed in 2000. Here, the Sixth Circuit compared the photography of both catalogs and legally decided that the two had different approaches and affirmed that American Eagle did not copy Abercrombie’s trade dress:
Throughout the Quarterly, A&F makes extensive use of photographs depicting apparently college-aged people in often erotic or homoerotic poses or situations wearing clothes with A&F logos displayed more or less prominently… American’s photographs in contrast, present a decidedly wholesome image, with people of various ages in non-suggestive, often family-oriented situations; nudity is absent (Abercrombie).
This case serves to exemplify and reinforce the vastly different approaches that each company pursues in their marketing of cool. As evidenced, Abercrombie relies on the use of the naked physical body, whereas American Eagle portrays its models clothed and in various social environments.
What these catalogs create in their depictions of the the physical body and the environment in which it inhabits is an idealized vision of youth in which one can only aspire and achieve through purchase of these lifestyle brands. In these images and narratives, Abercrombie and American Eagle construct identity, which becomes the real product that they are selling. Hence identity becomes commodified in a postmodern sense, “represent[ing] a fundamental shift in identity construction as the logic of late capitalism emphasizes not the relationship of people to the mode of production, but instead stresses consumption” (Engel). The catalogs sell clothing which in a sense contain a wearable and changeable identity that is performed through consumption rather than being an innate trait within the individual. Gail Faurshou explains that “postmodernity then is no longer an age in which bodies produce commodities, but where commodities produce bodies” (qtd. in Engel). This is what both Abercrombie and American Eagle do in their catalogs. They model identities of the body and sell this identity through their apparel, allowing identity to be worn and their products to shape the identity of the teenage population.
Both catalogs create experiences in their images that are easily recreatable for a teenager in the target demographic, like throwing a Christmas party or having a photoshoot with one’s siblings for an art project. The narratives of the catalogs “not only [portray] the illusion that the models have actually lived the experience, but, more importantly, how the experience can be duplicated and performed by the consumer. Thus, the image functions as a template to construct reality” (Engel). Hereby, the viewer can copy the images he consumes in the catalog and mimic them in his own life. However, these images are purely constructed and were never lived out by the models to begin with. Figure 14 shows the spread of the photoshoot that Whitney Emerson supposedly shot with her brothers. The copy reads: “Whitney’s debut photo expo, 2000. She started at the San Francisco Arts Institute back in the fall for photography. She’d taken these portraits during October break for a midterm project…” (A&F Quarterly 142). The images portray her brothers posed nude among foliage. While the copy claims Whitney took the photos, the style of the images is in concordance with the rest of the photography in the Quarterly that Whitney Emerson posed in but did not shoot. It is highly unlikely that this photoshoot was authentic and actually shot by Whitney Emerson. It was most likely posed, like the rest of the images, to look authentic. Since this narrative is posed and not real, an imitation performed in reality would leave the individual as a simulacrum: “an empty reality in that it is grounded in spectacle, in a consumption of itself, in the unreal, in the image of the image of the image” (Engel). Here, a pseudo, postmodern identity is formed, in which the individual sees a posed image that is constructed to look desirable and reenacts it in reality through actions and buying the brand product associated with the image. The identity being reenacted was never real to begin with, it was only a simulation. Thus, the identity being performed by the individual is fake and not true to his innate being. The consumption of media images to create identity leads to what Baudrillard terms the “hyperreal:”
In other words, by enacting a particular look – the all-American masculinity of the A&F photography, for example – we generate a realness without any original reality. As Baudrillard suggests, in this age of enacting image, “it is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of signs of the real for the real” (Engel).
The postmodern identity and reality are derived from unreal sources, like the posed photographs and narratives seen in these catalogs. It is in this way that Abercrombie and American Eagle promote pseudo identity.
The ease at which these images and narratives can be copied poses a danger to the teenage body. Through the copying of identity, the adolescent loses the opportunity to forge his own identity and instead becomes the hyperreal simulacrum of an identity that has already been approved to be desirable and youthful by society. The lifestyle brands offered by Abercrombie and American Eagle offer a way for teenagers to “fit in” and be accepted. The need to assume identity for acceptance can be understood through Jacques Lacan’s “mirror phase” which suggests “the body in pieces [le corps morsel] finds its unity in the image of the other, which is its own anticipated image” (qtd. in Engel). By looking through the images of the catalogs, the viewer is able to come to understand himself through the images of other adolescents that resemble him in some way. By copying the images, the individual comes to the sense that he can fulfil his incomplete body and assume a complete identity. Through the “removal of youth as a category connected to biological growth” and the replacement of “youth as a feeling or lifestyle available to all for purchase,” youth and identity truly become commodified (Gennaro 28). The final step of buying into the pseudo identity is enacted through the ordering of that fateful sweater from one’s chosen brand.
When flipping through the A&F Quarterly or American Eagle catalog, it becomes easy to find oneself engulfed in the elaborate narratives and daydreaming about how exciting and fun one’s life would be if he simply placed an order for that vintage polo. During adolescence, it is important to create an identity true to oneself. However, lifestyle brands aimed at teens make it more convenient to simply assume and reenact a pseudo identity that is pre-approved and constructed on the pages of a catalog. They can see themselves having the ideal body and living in the ideal space, all proclaimed by the stitched logo on their chest. Postmodern identity is a choice, and in the end one company will win the competition in having you model their brand: which identity will you choose?
Works Cited
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