ABERCROMBIE & GLITCH / Asian Americans rip retailer for stereotypes on T-shirts

Asian Americans recoiled upon seeing Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts. Chronicle photo by Paul Chinn Asian Americans recoiled upon seeing Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts. Chronicle photo by Paul Chinn Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close ABERCROMBIE & GLITCH / Asian Americans rip retailer for stereotypes on T-shirts 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Days after hitting store shelves, new Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts featuring caricatured faces with slanted eyes and rice-paddy hats had Asian Americans in the Bay Area and beyond demanding a public apology from the retailer.

The Midwestern clothier, which targets the young, affluent and active, said it was surprised by the mounting controversy over the T-shirt designs.

One has a slogan that says, "Wong Brothers Laundry Service -- Two Wongs Can Make It White." Beside the prominent lettering are two smiling figures in conical hats harking back to 1900s popular-culture depictions of Chinese men.

"We personally thought Asians would love this T-shirt," said Hampton Carney,

with Paul Wilmot Communications in New York, the public relations firm where Abercrombie referred a reporter's call.

"I wouldn't know how they could think that," said Austin Chung, 23, of Palo Alto, business manager for the quarterly Asian-focused magazine Monolid. "Abercrombie & Fitch is producing popular culture, and they cater to the views of the majority. You have to ask yourself, who benefits, who gets empowerment, from these kinds of images? It denigrates Asian men."

As word of the new T-shirts in Abercrombie stores spread yesterday among university students and on far-reaching e-mail lists, plans shaped up for a late-night meeting in a Stanford dorm lounge.

The subject: What to do about the series of themed T-shirts the retailer -- known for edgy advertising and skin-bearing advertising -- introduced Friday in stores and on its Web site, www.abercrombie.com.

"Wok-N-Bowl -- Let the Good Times Roll -- Chinese Food & Bowling," one design reads, with a stereotypical image similar to the figures on the Wong Brothers shirt.

"Abercrombie and Fitch Buddha Bash -- Get Your Buddha on the Floor," reads another shirt that shares display space in the youth-oriented, casual-clothing store.

'TRULY AND DEEPLY SORRY'

The shirts were designed to appeal to young Asian shoppers with a sense of humor, Carney told The Chronicle yesterday.

The shirts were available for sale yesterday in the Abercrombie store at San Francisco Shopping Centre on Market Street. Whether they will remain on the shelves was unclear yesterday, the spokesman said.

"We are truly and deeply sorry we've offended people," said Carney, adding that he had spent much of the afternoon returning calls of complaint, many of them from Stanford students.

"We never single out any one group to poke fun at," Carney said. "We poke fun at everybody, from women to flight attendants to baggage handlers, to football coaches, to Irish Americans to snow skiers. There's really no group we haven't teased."

Abercrombie might consider rethinking that approach when marketing to -- or representing images of -- racial and ethnic groups, said Michael Chang, vice chairman of Stanford's Asian American Students' Association, organizers of last night's meeting on campus.

"It's really misleading as to what Asian people are," Chang said. "The stereotypes they depict are more than a century old. You're seeing laundry service. You're seeing basically an entire religion and philosophy being trivialized."

Abercrombie should apologize publicly, starting with a message from corporate headquarters, Chang said.

The Asian students' association at Stanford yesterday was encouraging calls to the company.

EVEN STORE MANAGER SURPRISED

Chang said Stanford students who complained to individual Bay Area store managers quickly realized that was futile because the merchandise decisions were being made at a higher level.

Stanford senior BJ Lee, 21, said one store manager acknowledged even he had been surprised when the T-shirts arrived at his store.

"We tried to get them pulled, but we weren't successful," Lee said. "Managers don't have authority."

The online chat about Abercrombie doesn't stop at Stanford.

"This story is going around the whole Asian e-mail circle," said Kevin Choi,

a 21-year-old student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said the chorus of angry voices was growing at MIT and near the campus. Some students organized public protests in front of Abercrombie stores, he said.

"I think they need to apologize, to make a public statement, but I also think they need to start looking at their whole strategy for how they portray people," Choi said. "Maybe it sells in the suburbs . . . but their whole national marketing image is buff, tanned male and female models without any Asian representation."

Last year, Abercrombie & Fitch caught flak from some activist groups, and even state governments, for what they viewed as sexually suggestive advertising campaigns and catalog photos.

Sometimes that kind of publicity can help a retailer more than it hurts, said retail analyst Jennifer Black with Wells Fargo Securities in Portland, Ore.

"In all honesty, I think the controversy (over sexually charged advertising) is kind of a marketing thing -- the teens love it," and they're crucial to Abercrombie's customer base, Black said.

But pushing controversial racial or ethnic depictions is different, said Black, who added that the best damage control might be "to come out with an immediate apology."

COMPANY TO DISCUSS RESPONSE

Carney said company executives would discuss a formal response today to the complaints they had received. He said he did not know how many of the T- shirts had been distributed or whether they had reached stores in all regions yet.

"They're part of a fashion line that moves in and out of stores," he said.

Abercrombie, a company that started with one small New York City outdoors store and factory in 1892, sold $1.36 billion worth of upscale clothing, accessories, shoes and related casual merchandise in the fiscal year that ended in February. The heavily mall-based retailer has headquarters in Columbus, Ohio.