Abercrombie & Fitch was America's hottest brand. It became 'what discrimination looks like'

If you came of age sometime between the two Bush presidencies, chances are you've had — or still have — strong feelings about Abercrombie & Fitch, the retailer whose logo T-shirts were once ubiquitous in high-school cafeterias.

Perhaps you aspired to the brand's narrow definition of cool. Perhaps you resented the company's exclusionary identity. Perhaps both. But you simply couldn't be a young person in the late 1990s and early 2000s and avoid Abercrombie.

Now, a new Netflix documentary examines the brand and its legacy, arguing that Abercrombie's corporate culture was even more noxious than the cologne its employees dispensed with zeal at malls across the country.

"White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie" explains how the company, founded in the 1800s as a purveyor of sporting goods for elite adventurers, became the hottest label of the "TRL" era under the leadership of Chief Executive Michael