The early days! Plenty of celebrities dabbled in modeling before making it big — and a shocking number of them worked for Abercrombie & Fitch.
The sportswear brand found itself back in the spotlight after the April 2022 release of Netflix’s documentary White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & FitchThe following article explores what happened in the aftermath Michael Jeffries became the company’s CEO in 1992. Despite declining sales and accusations of racism within his company, the businessman decided to resign in 2014. However, the many photos of pre-fame models for the brand remain.
“I was actually one of the guys in the catalog,” Channing TatumSubmitted InterviewIn April 2009, magazine noted that he wasn’t one of those shirtless men who stood outside the store. “I had to put on a chicken suit at one point. I was like a mascot. We were in a locker room, and there were a bunch of dudes with abs all the way down to their … whatever the hell — their perineums? And then I was in the chicken suit standing next to them.”
Jennifer LawrenceFor her part, she participated in a football themed photo shoot before becoming an Oscar-winning actress. The photos were never published because she was too focused on winning the fake game.
“All the other models are, like, playing football in a pretty way, but not me,” the JoyStar spoke during a December 2015 appearance Graham Norton Show. “[In] all of the photos, I’ve got a red face, [I’m]My nostrils are burning from the sweat. … At one point, a girl yelled, ‘Just get her away from me.’”
When the Kentucky native realized that she’d never seen any snaps from the shoot, her team helped her investigate. “My agent wrote and asked why, and they literally only responded with the photos,” she recalled.
Though A&F is an apparel brand, some of their ’90s and early aughts campaigns made headlines for featuring very few actual clothes. Malin AkermanFor one, he posed topless with a young woman Jamie Dornan circa 2002.
“I don’t really know what we were selling,” the 27 DressesStar joked during a February 2017 interview Late Night with Seth Meyers. “We got to set and after two shots, the clothes came off. [The photographer] didn’t want any clothes on us. … Needless to say, we got to know each other very well.”
Keep scrolling to see which celebrities got their start modeling for Abercrombie & Fitch.
