LAUNCHED IN 2010, THE SITCH ON FITCH BECAME THE INSPIRED, RESPECTED BRAND OF PASSION OVER THE ACHIEVEMENTS AND PRESTIGE OF ABERCROMBIE & FITCH CO. (ADMIRATION FOR ITS PAST GOING BACK TO 1892 AND FOR THE MODERN-TIME HEIGHTS OF THE MIKE JEFFRIES ERA); IT WAS OFFICIALLY, POSITIVELY RECOGNIZED BY A&F HOME OFFICE BY APRIL 2012, WITH A DIRECT EMAIL TO THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, DURING ITS GROWTH AS THE ONE-OF-A-KIND, MULTINATIONAL ONLINE PUBLICATION, WITH HIGH-GRADE PRESENTATION WHICH EVOLVED OVER ITS RUN, FOR RELEVANT, UNIQUE, IN-DEPTH BUSINESS, CULTURE, AND STYLE CONTENT FOR THE COMMUNITY OF CUSTOMERS AND ASSOCIATES WORLDWIDE (MONTHLY PAGEVIEWS SURPASSED 110K BY AUGUST 2012); AND IT WAS FOLDED BY SEPTEMBER 2015 AFTER THE DECEMBER 2014 RETIREMENT OF MIKE JEFFRIES AND THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF'S DISTASTE WITH THE FURTHER DEGRADATION OF THE COMPANY BY ITS NEW MANAGEMENT. WITH CONTENT BY THE PERSPECTIVE OF DEVOTED CUSTOMERS AND ASSOCIATES FROM AMERICA, EUROPE AND FAR EAST ASIA, THE SITCH ON FITCH (2010-2015) REMAINS AS A HISTORICAL, ZEITGEIST ONLINE PUBLICATION OVER THE FINAL YEARS OF THE MIKE JEFFRIES ERA. THIS SITE WILL BE REVAMPED SOON TO OFFICIATE AN INTELLIGENT ARCHIVE FOR THE USE OF ALL PARTIES INTERESTED IN THE CONTENT PUBLISHED DURING THE PUBLICATION'S ORIGINAL RUN.
An insta-classic? The highly admired pic from our new instagram account.
Photo by C.E.R. for The Sitch on Fitch.
CHRISTMAS 2013 has been the fourth Xmas season at #THEHOTTESTBLOG, though very much quite the different one. Markedly, this has been the first to carry on with no high-profile A&F Flagship store openings festivities – what have always been our signature appeal, what thousands worldwide relish, and the hallmark of our Christmases. Instead, this Christmas 2013 we experienced took a thrilling sleigh ride through new territory...
But the icing on the cake was definitely our new special holiday tradition, FIERCEMAS, during which we celebrate the 12 days leading up to Christmas Day with ever hot gifts! Fans definitely had fun in wonder of what the Moose would gift each day (see all gifts), and I already can't wait for when FIERCEMAS will take things to amusing new heights next year!
No epic flagship store openings, indeed, as in prior St. Nick seasons, but we sure had a Christmas to remember!
Now on the day of family, friends, food, and awesome presents, I wish a very joyous yuletide blast to all you awesome readers of the #THEHOTTESTBLOG 'round the world! I leave you off with this, my favorite of festive tunes ever played for Christmas by the A&F Family...
If you haven't yet, then you've totally gotta check out this all-new video from Hollister all about the #SoChill cool of Summer 2013! It features the lead single "Alive" of Australian duo Empire of the Sun straight from their all-new album, Ice on the Dune. Seriously, Ice on the Dune is beautiful, one of the great albums of 2013, and totally deserves a future Grammy nom! Released June 14, the album is defs you Editor-in-Chief C.E.R.'s favorite new thing to listen to at the moment...pure original awesome genius! Have yourself a viewing of HCo's vid and don't forget to soak in the latest musical cool of this incredible summer...
Had RUEHL survived the recession, it's interesting to think about how it would be as a brand today. With the recent surges in fashion-influenced merchandise across the brands, it may be correct in assuming RUEHL would be the most fashion forward of the bunch...or maybe not! Perhaps classic style would be more appropriate for the target demographic?
Regardless, we'll never know. However, the RUEHL brand continues to live on, and one crucial piece of the brand was it's incredible music. Here are a selection of songs that never made it onto a RUEHL playlist - either because they are post 2010, or they were simply never chosen....enjoy.
I hope you enjoy listening to these tracks. Let us know if you have any other classic tracks that should have been featured in any of the brands!
Dom
Byron Stingily - Back To Paradise (Frankie Knuckles Classic Mix)
This aptly titled piece of house is typical Frankie Knuckles - fantastic piano, and far more melodic than most other pieces in the house genre. A good few of his remixes made it onto the RUEHL playlists, and this is one which seems so good, it's criminal it was never included. Also helping is Stingily's fantastic falsetto voice which is unusual, but brilliant at the same time - a bit like RUEHL.
Groove Assassin and Kenny Bobien - About Love (Sean McCabe Remix)
Bringing RUEHL bang up to date is this fantastic recent release by Groove Assassin and Kenny Bobien - taken from the incredible album Tales From Beyond The Tone Arm by Frankie Knuckles (definitely check this one out). It's ironically the same album which contains the remix of Candi Staton's Hallelujia Anyway that was featured on the most recent A&F playlist (Christmas 2012). By this logic, perhaps we'll see this one soon too...who knows.
Jose Carretas Feat. Diviniti - Life In A Box (Original Mix)
Beware folks, now we're divulging into obscure territory now. This fantastic track by Brazilian musician Jose Carretas is incredibly rare and the sort of unusual thing you'd expect to find on a RUEHL playlist. It's brilliantly laid back and very lounge-y - definitely the sort of thing you could imagine hearing inside No.925...
The Girl From Ipanema (Jazz N' Groove Mix)
One of my personal favourites. Although this is a version of the famous song about the coolest beach in Rio, this Jazz N' Groove remix feels right at home in a Greenwich Village brownstone. Probably one of the most sophisticated and adult pieces of house music you'll ever find.
Kerri Chandler - On My Way
This incredibly jazzy piece of house music has just the right amount of cool to make it a perfect fit for RUEHL...the saxophone is great.
Martine Girault - Rivival
Possibly one of the finest pieces of lounge music ever produced. Martine is a fantastic singer, but sadly has been relegated into the realms of obscurity - very unfair. However, her best work is without a doubt Revival, a brilliant late-night-esque piece of music. This would have fit perfectly with shopping inside an empty Ruehl on a late summer night just before closing...sadly something we'll never be able to do again:
Have you ever wanted to take a tiny piece of the Hollister or A&F Experience home with you? Well, now you can...kind of ;) This week, I noticed two unofficial apps on the Apple App Store which allow you to store the Hollister or A&F playlists on your iPod (touch), iPhone, or iPad for when you are out and about!
There is a separate app for A&F and for HCo. The price for each is at £1.49, which is reasonable as you get to listen and save (for future listening) all the tracks each time a new playlist comes out.
Firstly, I'll start with the unofficial Hollister app for iPhone. I took these screenshots on my iPhone 5, so it might look slightly different on older versions of iPhone and iPod.
So as you can see, the unofficial app kinda looks like a genuine Hollister one although it is not. The wallpapers from Club Cali do look really cool and they change with each song. This unofficial app is one of the best apps I have personally ever bought. Probably just because I really like the Hollister music! Haha!
As I mentioned above, there is also an unofficial Abercrombie & Fitch playlist app. I've included a screenshot of iPad version. The A&F one looks just like the Hollister one on iPhone and iPod, too.
I do prefer the Hollister one, just because I think the songs are better. Haha! Please keep in mind that these apps are not genuine from Abercrombie & Fitch Co. The apps are unofficial, as I must stress. They could contain anything, and this post is only for informational purposes. Each app is up for £1.49 (UK Apple App Store).
Here is a link to both apps: A&F (here) | HCo. (here)
In light of her death and in honor of Whitney Houston, I want to note her notable appearances on the Abercrombie & Fitch playlists as one of the greatest artists to have ever been featured...
Whatchulookinat - featured on the September 2002 A&F Playlist
I Will Always Love You (Hex Hector Mix) - featured on the Spring 2012 playlist which was eerily released two days before her death. (This bullet is a 14 February 2012 update)
The remixes to her songs for the A&F Playlist, upbeat and alive, played it all cool within Abercrombie & Fitch stores. Her duet with Enrique Iglesias was one of the best songs to have ever played along with the romance of Ruehl No.925. Listening to it always reminds me of the seductive, sensual, and aspirational wonder that was Ruehl. And the Throw Down disc two on her Whitney: The Greatest Hits is just awesome! I first listened to it back in Christmas 2010 and I completely imagined some of those remixes blasting inside A&F Fifth Avenue! It's that good! That CD was like a soundtrack to my Christmas that year along with the A&F Family playlists. In fact, I also remember listening to I'm Every Woman (Clivilles & Cole Mix) while working on a post for Gilly Hicks when the brand opened its first international store in London: I thought, "This song totally needs to be played inside Gilly Hicks stores!" Just an undeniably fantastic artist...
Whitney Houston was pronounced dead inside the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles on February 11 at 4:00pm (Pacific Standard Time) / 7:00 (Eastern Standard Time); and, soon afterwards, national television programming was interrupted on channel ABC, here in America, to announce her death with a special report. A great tragedy on the eve of the biggest night in music, news of her passing hit deep and hard in the hearts of many and spread far and wide throughout media and social networking around the world...
A winner of six Grammy Awards, Whitney Houston was honored and remembered at the 54th Grammy Awards ceremony on February 12 as a tribute to her life and for her profound contributions to music. A woman gifted with one of the most beautiful voices in modern music, she gave the world a great and magnificent body of work which has come to touch many worldwide and influenced the likes of Celine Dion, Toni Braxton, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Hudson, Lady Gaga, and Adele. (Most of those singers have also had their songs played on Abercrombie & Fitch playlists).
A beautiful woman, a wonderful artist, Whitney Houston will always be present in human culture as one of the greatest stars - a phenomenal singer - in the art of music...
I will always love you, Whitney,
C.E.R., editor-in-chief
My god, when I walked into Abercrombie & Fitch the day after Christmas Day and this song came up, it was as if I was hit by romanticism like a runaway train... The imagery: "Lie in bed, but I can't sleep / on the ledge, but I can't leap...when you kiss my lips, I see lightning in the sky...one step forward and two steps back, you're love is like a hurricane / when you're with me, I'm on track / we're riding on a crazy train / I'll be fine, if you're mine / on the end of the line...butterflies I want to keep / I try to laugh, but I just weep / something about you gets me so deep inside...one step forward and two steps back, you're love is like a hurricane..." It just takes you on an emotional storm; it stirs the inner romance in us all. This song is amazing.
And I am sure many of you felt the same way. Love is a Hurricane(7th Heaven Radio Edit) by Boyzone was a part of the A&F pre-Spring 2011 playlist that played in stores from December 26th to mid-Ferbruary. This happens to be my pick for one of the best playlists ever compiled for Abercrombie & Fitch and I rank this track as one of the top best in the playlist. Basically, that makes the track one of the best songs ever played inside A&F and of course it is. Love is a Hurricane(7th Heaven Radio Edit) is classic Abercrombie & Fitch: romantic, passionate, energetic, and youthful, nothing comes close.
I really, really love this song and decided to check out the artists. Boyzone is an Irish pop boyband that came together in 1993 with five guys - Keith Duffy, Stephen Gately, Mikey Graham, Ronan Keating, Shane Lynch - Keating and Gately were the band's leading singers. Boyzone's first studio album, Said and Done, was released in November 1994 and was certified 3x platinum in the United Kingdom. A Different Beat, their second studio album, which was released in October 1996, was also certified 3x platinum. Boyzone's third album, Where We Belong, was mostly written by the band members and became the 3rd best selling in the UK for the year; it was certified 5x platinum after being released in May 1998. After 2000, the guys split up to pursue solo careers. They had sold over 13 million records and were one of the best-selling artists of the time. In October 2009, Stephen died in his apartment in Majorca, Spain, of pulmonary oedema which resulted from an undiagnosed heart condition: "Stephen Gately’s death represents the first time that the boyband genre has had to deal with such a tragic situation," stated the The Irish Times. His name was one of the most searched for topics on Google UK in 2009, and "Boyzone" came third after Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize accolade. Gately was the band's openly gay member, a philanthropist, and heralded as a hero of gay rights by The Times UK.
Named in memory of Gately, Boyzone's first studio album in 12 years was titled Brother. A tribute to Gately, and featuring vocals by him, the single Gave It All Away was #1 on the Irish Singles Chart and a Top 10 in the UK Singles Chart. Released in March 2010, the album over all was positively reviewed. The second and last single happens to have been...you guessed it...Love is a Hurricane. It is the original version and no less amazing. I watched the official music video for it this past weekend and it is awesome, truly awesome...and damn those Irish guys are hot!
I've since got their Said and Done and Brother albums in my iTunes library, but haven't got the chance to listen to them completely. That's why I wasn't able to comment on how much I liked them. Nevertheless, from what I have listened to, they're totally great. Especially Brother which is one of the best reviewed. However, this album is more adult rock than the pop Boyzone is known for. All-in-all, very, very good music. And I've gotta thank Abercrombie & Fitch for introducing me to these guys. Boyzone's got a fan in me! Stay FIERCE!
P.S. This is all very coincidential for me considering that A&F is opening in Dublin!
After all the cool jingles that rocked the stores this holiday season, there are now awesome new playlists dance away the new year!
The A&F Family got a little a head of itself and actually launched the post-Christmas/pre-Spring playlists on December 22 online. It's kind of a holiday turn off when you expect to listen to "The Naughty Song" by Oscillator (two days before Christmas) on abercrombie.com, but instead you here "Like a G6" by Far East Movement! "Hell, yeah," that was enjoyable, but just not appropriate in the timing. Nevertheless, you could still visit, say, HCo for last minute gifts and shop around while enjoying the SoCal "Last Christmas" remix.
Now that Christmas has finally come to pass, the late-winter/pre-Spring 2010 playlists are now keeping things pumping! They are all awesome in their own individual style. Visit the Music section of the Winter 2010 tab to get the 411 on these totally fantastic tracks!!!
"It's gonna be a wild, wild Christmas when you're with me..." - HCo. Christmas 2010 playlist
The playlists for all our favorite Abercrombie & Fitch brands have now been updated with new music for the holiday season! They are full of jingle and Christmas lyrical fun to get you into that warm holiday feel while you shop for cozy hoodies and more. Gilly got ahead of the game with new tunes launched on Wednesday while the rest of the family tagged along on Thrusday in time for the opening of A&F Copenhagen. They are all awesome...let's gear up for a really incredible Christmas 2010, everyone!
