Abercrombie & Fitch Faces Pink-Tax Backlash Over Same-Priced Jumpers

Abercrombie & Fitch, the US clothing brand, is facing a backlash after a shopper found that its women's jumper costs the same as a men's one but contains far less wool, according to The Guardian.

Fashion content creator Rachael Brownfield noticed the gap while browsing the brand's website. The men's jumper is 100% merino wool and sells for $95 (£71) in the menswear section. The women's jumper also costs $95, but it is only 30% wool.

The two jumpers are different styles. The brand marketed them alongside each other in a social media post, and Brownfield's TikTok video questioning the pricing has been viewed two million times and drawn nearly 10,000 comments.

The debate has a name. The "pink tax" describes the extra cost that can attach to products sold to women, where the women's version of an item is priced the same as, or higher than, the men's version, even when the materials differ.

Style Analytics examined full-price knitwear on the US websites of six major US brands. It found that men's jumpers costing under $100 are up to five times more likely than women's jumpers to be made of 100% natural fibres such as wool, cotton or cashmere. In the same price bracket, women's jumpers are twice as likely to contain polyester, a synthetic fibre made from petroleum-based materials.

According to Style Analytics, the gap between men's and women's knitwear closes only once the price reaches $100 or more.

The Guardian approached Abercrombie & Fitch for comment on the pricing disparity.

For shoppers, the numbers point to a practical question: what a given price buys in fibre content. Fibre content is printed on care labels and product listings, and it is the detail the two jumpers differ on most.