The Abercrombie Age: Millennial Aspiration and the Promise of Consumer Culture

by Myles Ethan Lascity

Overview

Be popular and good-looking—it’s the key to a happy life. Luckily, with a bit of know-how and money, you, too, can have it all. At least, that’s what teen pop culture was selling in surround sound at the turn of the millennium. From movies like Clueless to TV’s Dawson’s Creek to the music videos on MTV’s Total Request Live and the catalogs of Abercrombie & Fitch, a consumer-minded ethos drove pop culture storytelling as millennials came of age in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But in the long shadow of the Great Recession, the upwardly mobile aspirations fostered by the era’s popular culture and media seem to have been thwarted. Many millennials today lack the wealth their parents had at the same age, and the gaps between rich and poor rival those of the Gilded Age.

The Abercrombie Age reconsiders teen popular culture from the turn of the twenty-first century, revealing how it told young people that life not only could but surely would get better. Far from frivolous or forgettable, the era’s superficial, materialistic culture sold millennials unrealistic expectations of what life could offer, setting up a stark juxtaposition with the realities of today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469680903
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	10/15/2024
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Myles Ethan Lascity is assistant professor and director of the fashion media program at Southern Methodist University.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“The Abercrombie Age is an informed and timely investigation of early 2000s teen culture. Through thoughtful analyses of nostalgic media texts—from A&F Quarterly to Clueless—Lascity argues convincingly that millennials were sold a false promise of affluence that has not come to fruition. It will surely resonate with readers interested in pop culture, media, fashion, and their impacts on American culture.”—Lauren Downing Peters, author of Fashion Before Plus-Size: Bodies, Bias, and the Birth of an Industry

“With measured reasoning and an eye for detail, Lascity deftly catalogs the changing seasons of millennial culture, revealing how fashion advertising came to clothe a wide collection of aspirational identities.”—Kevin L. Ferguson, author of Eighties People: New Lives in the American Imagination

Editorial Reviews

“Lascity’s penetrating cultural analysis takes stock of how commercialism distracted a generation from the need for political change until it was too late. It’s an unusually empathetic and rigorous inquiry into the plight of millennials.”—Publishers Weekly

“Lascity . . . explores teen consumer culture in the late 1990s and early 2000s and its relationship to the era’s popular culture as seen in television, film, and pop music. Each pop culture text highlights a different aspect of privileged frivolity’s reach and influence. . . . Recommended.”—CHOICE

“The Abercrombie Age is an entertaining read that legitimizes a specific group of millennials and their popular culture as serious objects of academic inquiry.”—H-Material-Culture

“The Abercrombie Age is an informed and timely investigation of early 2000s teen culture. Through thoughtful analyses of nostalgic media texts—from A&F Quarterly to Clueless—Lascity argues convincingly that millennials were sold a false promise of affluence that has not come to fruition. It will surely resonate with readers interested in pop culture, media, fashion, and their impacts on American culture.”—Lauren Downing Peters, author of Fashion Before Plus-Size: Bodies, Bias, and the Birth of an Industry

“With measured reasoning and an eye for detail, Lascity deftly catalogs the changing seasons of millennial culture, revealing how fashion advertising came to clothe a wide collection of aspirational identities.”—Kevin L. Ferguson, author of Eighties People: New Lives in the American Imagination

From the Publisher