The Internet is abuzz right now with screen grabs and links to a site that claims to be an outlet for Abercrombie & Fitch and which also describes a pair of pants as being “Ni**er Brown.” Of course, some people are already getting angry at A&F, which is no stranger to controversy, but they might have missed that this is obviously not a legitimate Abercrombie website.

First off, the URL for the site is the overly long http://www.abercrombie-and-fitchoutlet.com, which is also not registered by the same company that registered the official abercrombie.com URL.

Second, all the product descriptions are a bit off, such as “Abercrombie & Fitch mswe29 Dimgray Sweaters” and “Abercrombie & Fitch mout14 Dark Tan Outerwears,” not exactly the kind of slick marketing speak used by a savvy retailer like Abercrombie, even for an outlet store.

Besides, the retailer details on its actual website how “No other website [other than Abercrombie.com] is authorized to sell Abercrombie & Fitch merchandise. Don’t be fooled by the counterfeiters that attempt to copy the look of our website by stealing our images and content or by including our name within their domain address.”

And aside from the fact that no one can find any evidence of A&F ever having sold pants with the offending name, the final piece of evidence is in the description of the pants, which reads:
“Abercrombie and Fitch brand has been attracting the young market to the greatest extent.They are in love with these products,for they perfectly suit their looks.The reason of success of A&F is the dedication,which you can see in its stitching,designs,detailing,fabric and color contrasting.It pays attention on each and every detail of the garments and accessories.”

And then there’s the “outlet” store’s blog, which contains some straight-out-of Google Translator gems as “The fact that clothing evokes could be the actuality that of an outdated money family, using the best level of quality and style, but an ultimate attitude of insouciance about it.”

More than likely this is some completely unrelated business that is trying to profit off of people who aren’t very good at doing Google searches, or who are willing to suspend disbelief in the name of cheap, potentially fake, clothing.

Back in 2007, we brought you the story of a Canadian woman whose couched was described using the same racially insensitive term. Ultimately, the phrasing was blamed on Kingsoft translation software that inexplicably translated “dark brown” and “ni**er brown.”

After several hours of not saying anything about the topic, in spite of numerous Tweets and Facebook posts demanding a response, A&F is finally replying to some angry customers.

“This is NOT our site and is NOT affiliated in any way with our company. We condemn the use of this word in any form,” reads one reply from the retailer on its Facebook page.

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