Teenage Protesters Storm Abercrombie & Fitch Shouting: "A+F Stop Your Spray, Your Toxic Fragrance Must Go Away!"

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Last week, a gang of teenagers stormed the San Francisco Abercrombie & Fitch—but they weren't there to buy this season's newest jeans. The students gathered outside Westfield Mall's A&F to protest the store's spraying of its signature fragrance—or, as the organization Teens Turning Green calls it, "toxic trespassing." Check out the homemade signage, above. Our favorite is the one that reads: "A&F's Fierce Damages Male Sperm Count." They also chanted this rhyming slogan: "A+F Stop Your Spray, your toxic fragrance must go away!" Time magazine reports:

Pumped through the circulation vents at some A&F stores, the potent perfume has been the complaint of headaches for years, but if these toxic claims are valid, the franchise faces an entirely new type of embarrassment than simply being the store who bumps out-of-touch club music and stifles your air supply with throat burning cologne: lawsuits. According to the local NBC affiliate, the chanting teens marched around the store for a few minutes, demanding the removal of the fragrance from the air, before security emptied the store.

If you've been near an Abercrombie & Fitch store in the last, oh, ten years, you're probably familiar with the brand's policy that all air in the store and in the immediate outside vicinity must smell like the company's newest fragrance. Bet you didn't know it was lowering your sperm counts, too, huh?

Ah, youth. In the '60s they had the Vietnam War to protest. Today, we've got Abercrombie & Fitch.
· Abercrombie and Fitch - Stop the Spray [Teens Turning Green]
· Perfume protest: Teens storm toxic Abercrombie & Fitch [Time]

Abercrombie & Fitch

865 Market St., San Francisco, CA