Netflix’s latest documentary is White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch, which delves into the many controversies that circled around the iconic 1990s fashion brand.
Mike Jeffries was at the center of many of those controversies. He was CEO of Abercrombie from 1992 to 2014, over which time the company (among other scandals) was protested over a series of racist t-shirts and forced to accept a consent decree to diversify its workforce. Jeffries stoked these scandals with interviews in which he doubled down on the company’s “exclusionary” image.
White Hot tells the story of the company in depth until around 2014, when Jeffries was ousted from the company. Since then, the businessman has kept a fairly low profile, but some details of his life since leaving A&F have been made public.
Where is Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries now?
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In January 2014, per Forbes, the company stripped Jeffries of his chairman title. As is often the way in business, what led to his downfall was not the many controversies he had been part of, but money.
By the time he was ousted, A&F had had eight consecutive quarters of declining sales, as the company lost business to fast fashion brands like Forever 21 and Zara. In the year prior to Jeffries exiting his role, shares in the company had lost a quarter of their value.
At the end of 2014, he officially retired from the company at the age of 70. At the time, he said in a statement: “It has been an honor to lead this extraordinarily talented group of people. I am extremely proud of your accomplishments. I believe now is the right time for new leadership to take the company forward in the next phase of its development.”
At the time, Bloomberg noted that the businessman could not be reached for comment— foreshadowing his move away from the public eye after leaving the company.
In April 2015, it was reported by Columbus Business First that Jeffries left the company with at least $27 million in cash and retirement benefits. This was per a proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which revealed that the CEO had a $19.33 million retirement plan with the company, $5.19 million in cash payments and over $300,000 in benefits coverage. The article noted that he could also have made much more, with the statement detailing equity awards of $10.18 million.
The prior month, it was reported that the company was selling the corporate jet that had been at the center of a controversy after details of the 47-page handbook for crew of the jet was made public (as discussed in the Netflix documentary).
Since then, Jeffries has only really hit headlines due to his repeated efforts to sell his midtown Manhattan home. Once the home of beauty mogul Elizabeth Arden, Jeffries bought the home for $11 million in 2006. First listed at $19.5 million in 2016, it eventually sold two years later for $12.9 million.
As for his personal life, his last known partner was Matthew Smith, who he was reported as living with following a separation from his second wife.
White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch is streaming now on Netflix.