The year is 1999. The summer is rolling into fall and Labor Day weekend is spent shopping for last-minute back-to-school clothes. Teen girls, in particular, are flocking to one store. After all, the LFO hit, “Summer Girls,” is playing non-stop on the radio, solidifying Abercrombie & Fitch’s status as the hottest teen retailer of the day. Flash forward 17 years and Abercrombie has all but lost its luster. Same-store sales have been falling for years. In its latest earnings call with investors this week, the company announced plans to close about 60 stores, signaling that its attempt to save the brand has pretty much failed. Abercrombie has been trying to save itself around for a while now, reinventing its image and as a result becoming totally unrecognizable to the generation of kids who grew up shopping there in the late ’90s and early aughts. The goal was to appeal to older shoppers — 18 to 25 year olds, not teens. The brand lessened its use of logos and their male models put some clothes on.

The company loosened its notoriously stringent “look policy,” wherein salesclerks were formerly referred to as “models” and forbidden from having mustaches. The company tapped a former J. Crew exec and a former Club Monaco designer to lead its rebranding efforts. In theory, this was a smart idea. Betty Chen, managing director of Mizuho Securities, pointed out that this would open the gates to a demographic with more spending money. The move would also help Abercrombie set itself apart from its more teen-friendly sister brand, Hollister. But the brand’s attempt to execute a turnaround is proving to be very difficult. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015, the company, which also encompasses Abercrombie Kids as well as Hollister Co., saw its first positive quarter since 2012, though the Abercrombie brand saw a decrease of 2%. By the first quarter of fiscal 2016, sales for the parent company were down 4%. The Abercrombie brand was down 8% then. One reason was dropping tourist and international traffic.

In late August, right before second quarter 2016 earnings were announced, Eric Beder of Wunderlich Securities highlighted that Abercrombie’s efforts to rebrand could be futile. The “shift to an older customer makes little sense to us,” Beder wrote in a research note to clients. “While the shift to an older customer is a strategy for Abercrombie, we see limited reasons for older customers to shift back to a ‘teen’ brand and, frankly, there are better brands and lifestyles for the 20+ customer to focus on,” Beder wrote. Young adults now have fast fashion brands Zara and Forever 21 that beat Abercrombie & Fitch when it comes to affordability. Abercrombie costs more than the majority of fast fashion apparel — and unlike Zara, it doesn’t turn out runway trends at lightning speed. More affluent young adults may choose to shop at more under-the-radar, unknown brands like American Giant, Chen told Business Insider. Competition aside, the company’s struggles symbolize how tough it is for a brand to shift gears as dramatically as Abercrombie is trying to do.

“In the history of retail, it is very difficult when a brand tries to reposition itself anywhere along the age demographic,” Chen said. “You can almost predict failure when you’re going older or younger.” And Abercrombie’s image doesn’t help. “As you can imagine, there’s some preconceived notions with the brand’s image,” Chen said. Abercrombie & Fitch’s sordid reputation for preppy clothes and sexually explicit ads is embedded in millennial shoppers’ minds, the same way its logos were sewn permanently into its apparel.hoodie garuda indonesia Everything that Abercrombie & Fitch stood for just doesn’t jibe with consumers today.smosh hoodie amazon “You clearly have a group that cares less about logo and brand and more just about quality,” Chen said, “and they [haven't been] prioritizing apparel [instead, they're] using disposable income on electronics like smartphones, health and fitness, [and] even more so on experiences.”hoodie made for two listotic

In November, Abercrombie & Fitch chairman Arthur Martinez acknowledged that apparel represents a smaller percentage of young consumers’ spending these days. As Beder wrote in another note to clients, the brand is losing traffic because it’s losing market share — and that’s because people aren’t interested in the brand, which may account for this quarter’s 7% drop in same-store sales. Beder pointed to Urban Outfitters and American Eagle as two brands that posted positive comparable sales this quarter, suggesting that Abercrombie & Fitch just isn’t the king of the mall anymore.hbcu hoodie NOW WATCH: This is America’s most hated retail brandunder armour big logo hoodie tobagoI’ve been clothes shopping a few times this year, and each time I go, I get another reminder of how 32×34 must mean something else in Indonesia or the planning rooms at Abercrombie and/or Hollister Co. kataklysm hoodie

While the pant-sizing issue is a bummer in and of itself, the real pisser of late has been the “case of the shrinking shirt sizes.” On top of that, the ineptitude and utter detachment that the employees of these places display kind of drives me nuts, although it’s hard to blame them sometimes when you consider the retail environment. Anyhoo, so a couple of weeks ago, I went into Abercrombie with Courtney just to look around. We immediately saw a gray and white striped polo that I knew I would inevitably end up with, but I couldn’t find my size (large) anywhere on the floor. I badgered an employee about it, and a few minutes later, she emerged from the clusterf$*% that is the stock room with said gray polo in large. Now, just to bring you up to speed here, sizing in the late 90s wasn’t really a ridiculous crapshoot. Men’s clothes ran big at the time (because I guess that was the style), so you pretty much knew what you were getting. In 2002, Abercrombie introduced the “Muscle” cut on their shirts, which I think just meant that they were going to make their clothes smaller.

Being the attention-seeking man slut that I am, however, I enjoyed this switch because it meant that I wouldn’t have to resort to steroids in order to fill out the sleeves of your everyday shirt. When they first came out with the “Muscle” cuts, a medium was just about right, and a large was just a bit too, well, large. Over the last year or so, though, I’ve had to start getting larges because the mediums began to look downright ridiculous – like trying to slip a condom over a basketball. Now we go back to our story, only this time you know precisely why I needed a large, and you have this wonderful mental image to boot! I know, I know – I’m feeling generous today. So the girl came back from the stock room with my new shirt, and I bought it and headed on home. The next day, I went to put it on, and lo and behold – there’s a gaping hole where that damn sensor used to be. First question that comes to my mind is this: “How in the hell does the ‘Crombie Zombie’ who removed the sensor not see a hole 3/4″ in diameter?”

You know what I think? I think she saw it. I think she just didn’t care. I think she probably thought that the hole wasn’t like directly over my nipple or anything, so why should I care, right? Well, when I’m walking through my house not paying a lick of attention and brush across a door jamb, I’ll probably care a lot when I rip off half my shirt because the hole caught on the lock deal as I passed at 20 mph. Dismayed over the stupid hole, I had to take the uber cool gray and white stripe polo (in large) back to Abercrombie and exchange it for one that wasn’t ventilated so well. Of course, Murphy’s Law dictates that they would no longer have the gray polo in large, so I had to opt for another polo that I wasn’t quite as crazy about but liked nonetheless. I snatched up a large, made the exchange, and bolted out of there without really even thinking about it. The next morning, I went to put on the new polo. I first noticed a problem when trying to slide my arms through the armholes — umm, I kind of got hung up at the elbows.

After much struggling, I managed to pull on the new large polo, and once that bad boy was on, I felt like my arms were going to pop. The shirt was so freaking tight on my “guns” that the skin was actually wrinkling up underneath the cuffed part of the sleeve. It looked completely ridiculous. I have at least ten Abercrombie polos in my wardrobe, and I can say without hesitation that none of them have sleeves that small. Some are pretty tight on me, but nothing compares to the “large” that would fit the torso of a rhino but the arms of a monkey. Seriously, what is the agenda here? I think there should be at least some reward for being muscular as far as men’s clothes go. I don’t think your everyday chump should be able to fill out the sleeves of a large shirt. Proportionately, it’s got to look kinda weird, I would think. It damn sure looked weird on me! So anyway, I still have the “large” polo, and I guess I’m going to take it back to the store and try to exchange it for something that really does fit.