Two years after the release of the documentary Netflix exposes “White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch”, the former CEO of the retail company, Mike Jeffries he was arrested last week on international sex trafficking charges for crimes that occurred while he ran the clothing retailer from 1992 to 2014.

The 88-minute film, directed by Alison Klayman, served as a stepping stone to bring the clothing store’s reprehensible past back into the zeitgeist and eventually led to the BBC series World of Secrets: The Abercrombie Guys, which further opened the door for people to speak out about Jeffries’ alleged sexual conduct.

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“Whenever you do a documentary and report something, it becomes a beacon,” says Klayman. “More people are coming out of the woodwork that are hard to find in filmmaking. The number of messages about Jeffries that the film crew and I received in the wake of “White Hot” was a representation of all the people who initially felt like a needle in a haystack to find them .”

“White Hot” premiered on Netflix on April 19, 2022, and overnight became one of the streamer’s top movies to watch globally. The documentary explores the rise of Abercrombie & Fitch in the late 1990s and examines how, under Jeffries’ leadership, the store became known for sexual advertising and an emphasis on an “all-American” look that tended to feature white models. . The document alleges that photographer Bruce Weber, who was instrumental in creating Abercrombie’s marketing, which often featured homoerotic photos of half-naked, young and handsome men, was a predator who inappropriately touched his male models.

While a credit card at the end of “White Hot” says, “There are no reports of models alleging any sexual misconduct by Mike Jeffries,” Klayman says that during production, she was made aware of the alleged misconduct by to Jeffries.

“Being a freelance filmmaker, even when you’re doing something for Netflix, is very different from being a staff (news) reporter,” Klayman says. “You don’t have the same institutional protections in terms of reporting, and you end up making sure things are approved not only by your lawyers, but also by the insurance companies. I feel like with that card, we wanted to clarify what was public, but I definitely talked to people who had stories but didn’t want to go on the record, so I always wanted to come back to this story and do more because sometimes you can’t do it all at once.”

It’s unclear if any of the alleged victims named in the recent indictment against Jeffries were the same people who spoke to Klayman off the record, but the director says “the allegations in the indictment fit the stories we’ve been told since many. people during the production and release (of ‘White Hot’).”

Jeffries left Abercrombie & Fitch in 2014 following numerous scandals the company faced, including a 2004 class action lawsuit that accused the brand of discriminating against black, Latino, Asian and female employees. Fran Horowitz took over as CEO of Abercrombie in 2017 and effectively revamped the brand’s “inclusive” image. But Jeffries’ recent arrest, according to The New York Times, sent Abercrombie shares down more than 11 percent.

Horowitz defended the retailer by telling The Times on Oct. 25, “We’re not the company we used to be.”

But Klayman isn’t so sure.

“What we’re trying to say with ‘White Hot’ was that Mike Jeffries was let go and Abercrombie changed its name in a certain way, but the question of whether he deserves any credit for that or whether it’s enough or even at what do we expect from brands, it’s a bigger question that we should talk about,” she says. “(Abercrombie) parted ways with Mike, but I knew a couple of executives who were responsible for the stuff from that era that we covered in the film that were kept. There is no complete isolation, I think. And I think Abercrombie is very happy to just say, ‘That’s the past,’ but I think it takes journalism and people to reveal whether it’s true or not, because a lot of it is PR and marketing.”

If Klayman were to make a sequel to “White Hot,” she said Variety that the document would explore “the impunity that comes with success and power when it comes to business in our society.”

“The number of people who said, ‘But (Jeffries) was a genius.’ And what was he a genius about? Back when Abercrombie was profitable. How far could this go in terms of rumored or known bad behavior from the lowest to the highest level at Abercrombie? I think that’s the bottom line,” says Klayman. “(The next doc) would be more than just a movie about Mike Jeffries and Abercrombie. It would be a story that is instructive about something larger and more structural in our society and system.”

Klayman would not say whether Netflix is ​​behind a second installment of “White Hot,” but the director acknowledged that “there has been a lot of interest.”

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