A 'sensação' da 'season'

Nas últimas semanas Londres esteve num rodopio com a abertura da loja de roupa norte-americana Abercrombie & Fitch. Reparei nela ontem, ao passar em Savile Row. Era inevitável: modelos sinistros à porta e house barato aos berros às 4 da tarde.

A grande razão nem é a roupa em si: é o que não falta em Londres. A razão começou por ser um anúncio com uma foto gigante de um modelo masculino de costas, tronco nu, com uma mão no pescoço e outra bem abaixo, mostrando o rabo. Aqui está ele.

Se já era algo histérica a mania de andar com a roupa interior à mostra, as modas passam e agora o bom é mesmo mostrar o rabo [que se no caso do modelo pode ser interessante, no caso dos milhões de jovens que andam pelas ruas não é exactamente assim...].

Este anúncio esteve em quase todos [senão todos?] os autocarros double-deck da cidade. Ninguém escapa ao rabo, que ainda circula por aí.

O que deixou de circular foi o histerismo para conseguir convites para a festa de abertura da loja da Abercrombie & Fitch em Savile Row.

Exactamente: a loja do rabo abriu no centro das lojas mais clássicas de Londres. Agora, quando fizer um fato à medida, tenha cuidado com os rabos e jovens imberbes da Abercrombie, até porque muitos são underage.

Já achei piada à Abercrombie: foi a loja que vendeu a arma com a qual Hemingway se matou [atenção às cartas românticas trocadas entre este e Marlene Dietrich e publicadas recentemente!], tem um site muito bem desenhado e modelos em regra excelentes.

Mas em Londres tudo parece correr mal. Aliás os escanzelados pálidos acima e a miúda de estação de serviço comprovam-no: são 3 dos 'modelos' da nova loja em Londres.

Um jornalista do pasquim Daily Mail fez uma reportagem com o título 'Poseurs Paradise!'. Candidatou-se a lojista da Abercrombie e veja-se o resultado:

"You've got just the right look to come and work for Abercrombie & Fitch" she told me. I was taken aback, flattered, but had no idea what she meant.

"Fantastic" I replied. Abercrombie & Fitch? The name rang a bell. Shortbread? Why would a biscuit firm want to employ me?

She explained that Abercrombie & Fitch was a clothing store and that they were hiring "models" to "just hang out" around the shop, wearing the company's clothing.

The penny dropped. I'd seen those risque; posters of a muscular man with a builder's bottom adorning London buses. I knew this homoerotic campaign has caused a stir.

[...]

This, I realised, was the American chain whose use of blatant sex to market their U.S. preppy style has attracted critics as well as custom. They promise a store full of "gorgeous kids".

[...]

She informed us that the company had a "tagline" which we would have to use when greeting customers. She explained, very seriously, that it was, "Hello, how are you?"

"How did you come up with that?" I asked. She said a company of marketing consultants had worked intensively at developing it.

[...]

One girl said she thought the store was a bit like GAP. That was the end of her. A week later the phone rang. I'd got the job. Would I come to an orientation day?

[...]

The doors are not yet open for business and I face a sea of preciselyplaced and neatly-folded merchandise. Outside the sun shines, but in here it is so dark I keep tripping over my flip-flops.

The shop presents itself as if it were the coolest clothes shop on the planet. Aimed at 20-year-olds, the store offers polo shirts, hoodies and tight jeans. David Cameron would shop here if he thought he could get away with it.

My eyes accustom to the gloom. I confront tacky paintings of teenage boys stripped to the waist in frames that aspire to the look of a grand country house.

The theme of male near-nudity is pursued throughout. It has caused trouble. One edition of the company's catalogue had to be recalled after a storm over the explicitly naked photographs of young models.

[...]

My first customer, a mother with two teenage kids, purchased more than £500 of T-shirts. But by the time I had scanned and de-tagged all the items, removed the coat hangers, totalled the cost and figured out how to charge the credit card, 25 minutes had elapsed.

[...]

The company told us it was an equal opportunity employer. Funny, because all its visible staff are young and beautiful.

The unattractive, the overweight and the disabled just don't seem to make it on to the shop floor. In fact, there is no lift and therefore no way for wheelchair users to work or shop upstairs.

As far as age goes, at 29 I was probably the oldest there. I thought that if the law permitted it, managers would have exercised quality-control over the customers, too, and I might be assigned to blow a whistle if anyone old or fat ventured in.

But employees who are not on public view are allowed to be slightly less attractive. The "impact team" is a group of workers who replenish the dwindling stock.

[...]

I don't get out of bed for less than £6.50. Fortunately this was A&F's hourly rate. They trade on the inexhaustable supply of beautiful dimwits for whom the excitement of being hired as "model" matters more than the pay scale. I got the impression that, ideally, they'd like us to pay them, rather than the other way round.

The men who stood semi-clothed at the entrance earned an extra £1 an hour. But they had the required A&F six-pack. The new way of selling clothes seems to be not wearing them.

[...]

A & F is unlike other foreign stores that arrive in the UK and try to fit in. It is brash and all-American. But they do want to be posh. Association with the quality tailoring of Savile Row, the listed building and the statues and art work, rub uneasily against the overt use of sex to sell clothes.

There's nothing tasteful in halfnaked boys hanging around the store door. Or are we just too oldfashioned for this fusion of softcore porn and high-class pose?

Os Estados Unidos no seu pior, ao tentarem ser algo de melhor.