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" You might not know: Before Abercrombie &amp;amp;amp; Fitch became the clubhouse of hypersexed coed undergrads on Vespas, it was the original heritage sporting-goods emporium. It was also the place that sold snakeproof sleeping bags to Teddy Roosevelt; expedition gear to Admiral Richard Byrd, for his trip into the depths of Antarctica; hunting coats to Hemingway; and fly rods, Magnums (as in guns), roulette wheels, and even 13-foot fiberglass pedal-propelled submarines to whomever else. It offered the equipment required by explorers\u2014even those trapped in concrete jungles. In 1931, E. B. White wrote of Abercrombie that it &amp;quot;carries the clothes men want to wear all the time and don&amp;#039;t; they carry the residual evidences of what men used to be before they became what they are.&amp;quot; The same could be said of the clothes that now inhabit Abercrombie &amp;amp;amp; Fitch. They are the best of what&amp;#039;s in the vaults, brought into the 21st century for persisting escapists.  This is the handiwork of Abercrombie &amp;amp;amp; Fitch&amp;#039;s new head of men&amp;#039;s wear, Aaron Levine, a man practiced in fashioning clothes younger working men actually want to wear. Before coming to Abercrombie &amp;amp;amp; Fitch, the Virginia-born 39-year-old turned Club Monaco into a mecca for ascendant and decidedly unstuffy professionals. Now he&amp;#039;s tasked with reasserting one of the world&amp;#039;s most recognizable\u2014and proudly historic (since 1892)\u2014brands for a very similar set.  &amp;quot;Nothing is safe,&amp;quot; Levine said one Friday morning this past spring. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re moving the whole needle. We&amp;#039;re questioning everything. Like four-year-olds, we&amp;#039;re just being curious and kind of, like, picking away at it, you know?&amp;quot; To start, Levine and his team rooted through the Ohio headquarters&amp;#039; office cabinets for back catalogs and scoured eBay for vintage pieces. They studied the consideration given to details throughout the 124-year-old company&amp;#039;s history\u2014the pocket shapes, the horn buttons, the beautiful stay stitches bolstering the undersides of collars\u2014a devotion Levine says he himself witnessed as an Abercrombie &amp;amp;amp; Fitch assistant manager in 1999, during its second golden era. Steeped in the tradition, Levine decided, &amp;quot;we can best serve that history by evolving it to the next level.&amp;quot;  He clarifies: This shouldn&amp;#039;t be construed as an attempt to make Abercrombie &amp;amp;amp; Fitch&amp;#039;s clothes modern. Levine and his company prefer words like honest and fresh. By uniting the new and the old, they seek to create uncommon experiences\u2014to explore. &amp;quot;What new fabric can we put into a silhouette to make it just feel like &amp;#039;Oh, wow, that&amp;#039;s refreshing,&amp;#039; you know?&amp;quot; he says, adding, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a very tactile industry. It&amp;#039;s a very emotional industry.&amp;quot; Levine&amp;#039;s other guiding descriptor: usable. But although a man&amp;#039;s needs may have stayed somewhat consistent through time\u2014clothing that accommodates seasons and weather and is appropriate for work and play\u2014that doesn&amp;#039;t mean, Levine says, the clothes shouldn&amp;#039;t advance. &amp;quot;Things need to be purpose-driven for our customer. But we also want to have things that are going to challenge him a little bit.&amp;quot; The result is a portfolio that is at once rugged and stylish, traditional and new\u2014and developing. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re working our hardest,&amp;quot; Levine says, chuckling. The landscape is still shifting, still growing up. But the rewards are already worth reaping.    Seeing A&amp;amp;amp;F exploring its roots, we dug into our archives and discovered this ad from the March 1962 Esquire. The coat looks quite familiar.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/style/news/a46466/aaron-levine-abercrombie-and-fitch/>