Abercrombie to check ID for catalog

Santa Claus won't be the only one checking to see if you're naughty or nice this holiday season, as Abercrombie & Fitch employees now are required to check identification when selling "Naughty or Nice," this month's issue of the company's quarterly magazine.

The policy follows a demand by Michigan Attorney General Jennifer Granholm that the company stop selling the $6 magazine to minors. An investigation by Granholm's office earlier this month revealed that employees at the Meridian Mall store in Okemos, Mich., did not require parental approval from underage customers despite a mature content warning on the packaging.

"When they're selling that type of material to children as young as 10, that's a problem," Granholm's spokesperson Chris Dewitt said. "They did no checking of any parental consent for children to buy these things."

The magazine, which last year printed a feature called "Binge Drinking 101," contains nude photos and an interview with a pedophile working as a shopping mall Santa Claus impersonator, Dewitt said.

"It's designed to get attention," Dewitt said. "Clearly that's what the company was trying to do. They knew that they were going to push the envelope so they would gain more attention than they normally would."

Hampton Carney, a spokesperson for Reynoldsburg, Ohio-based Abercrombie & Fitch, said shrink-wrap packaging and a warning sticker were instituted last year to prevent in-store browsing.

"This is adult stuff. We've said that from the beginning," Carney said. "You can't walk into an Abercrombie & Fitch store and flip through the quarterly. It has to be purchased."

Detroit radio station WJR-AM 760 contacted Granholm after listeners called to complain about the explicit content of the magazine. In a Nov. 19 interview with morning show personality Paul W. Smith, Granholm called the quarterly "Playboy for Kids."

"The pictures are kind of like Playboy but the writing is kind of like Hustler or worse," Smith said.

In response to Granholm's complaint, Carney said, the company has agreed to establish nationwide guidelines for selling the quarterly magazine.

"We will be carding every single person who wants to buy a copy of our quarterly," he said. "They could be 75 and we'll still ask for ID."

Carney said the 300-page magazine, which debuted in August 1997, is designed for 18- to 22-year-olds, the store's primary customers, as a magazine rather than a store catalog.

"We say it's almost coincidental that clothes are for sale in the quarterly," he said. "It's our main way of communicating with our core customers."

Abercrombie & Fitch's Website calls the company's line of clothes "the lifestyle for kids 7 to 14."

LSA first-year student Demoree Fritz, who recently purchased the holiday issue of the Abercrombie & Fitch quarterly, said it seemed very risqué.

"I wouldn't want my little brother looking at it," Fritz said.

Fritz said the design of the magazine suggests it is meant to promote the company's products.

"If they have an order form in it, it would be to order clothes, not for the words," she said.

Managers at both Okemos and Ann Arbor stores directed all inquiries about the quarterly to the company's headquarters.

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