One says he woke up after hiding out in a room to avoid sexual assault and found a condom in his anus with no recollection of how it got there. Another says he was flown to a sex party abroad where his passport and phone were taken and returned only when the party was over. Some thought they were about to get their big modelling break, only to find out they’d have to pay for it with sex.
These are the claims surfaced in World of Secrets: The Abercrombie Guys, a new BBC podcast and Panorama investigation that removes the all-American gloss from the preppy noughties brand Abercrombie & Fitch to reveal an apparently sordid world of alleged exploitation and abuse of power.
It begins in January 2021, when the journalist Rianna Croxford notices posts on social media from young men in the fashion world looking for their #metoo reckoning. One direct message later from a man called Barrett Pall and she has a phone number that leads to an in-person meeting across the ocean and a jaw-dropping allegation: that Mike Jeffries, the former chief executive of Abercrombie & Fitch, and his partner had for years thrown deeply suspect sex parties that left young men feeling exploited, vulnerable and violated.
We hear from two of those men directly in this podcast; both report performing sexual acts they didn’t want to for Jeffries and his romantic partner, a British man called Matthew Smith. And there are other victims here too – unnamed, their accounts voiced by actors – who corroborate these allegations of being “auditioned” by a middle man, who had them perform oral sex on him as a necessary stepping stone to a coveted audience with Jeffries and Smith. (Abercrombie & Fitch says it is “appalled and disgusted” by the alleged behaviour and that current management has “zero tolerance for abuse, harassment or discrimination of any kind”.)
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World of Secrets, which recounts events in 2009-15, paints eye-popping pictures of orgiastic parties in opulent surroundings, where employees provide champagne and lubricant to scores of young men who have their bodies shaved by staff in advance and dressed head to toe in A&F attire before they are admitted to the room where the most powerful man in this hypercool and coveted fashion brand will allegedly use them for his sexual gratification. The parties are elaborate and choreographed, staffed to the hilt and astoundingly expensive: every young male attendee paid off with a cash-stuffed white envelope afterwards.
The seven-part series – the same story was aired on the BBC’s Panorama programme last week as The Abercrombie Guys: The Dark Side of Cool – is a masterclass in investigative journalism and in how power works. Coxford is dogged, pulling thread after thread, knocking on doors and seeking help from other journalists to find out more about some of those she’s trying to track down. She keeps asking questions until we get to this one: how should Jeffries and Smith, both powerful and staggeringly wealthy and capable of altering the life trajectory of any of these young men, be held accountable?
It’s all insidious and manipulative and, sadly, hardly feels new: you want a job, and need the money, but it comes with “strings”, and informed consent goes out the window, to be replaced by an NDA you’re pressured to sign and an envelope of cash. World of Secrets makes for grim listening yet brings about a subtle shift in the power paradigm, allowing those who came forward to take charge of the story, and giving Barrett Pall, the man who kicked off the entire investigation with that one, all-important phone call, the final word. “Do you remember me?” he asks of Jeffries and Smith. They will now.
