Abercrombie & Fitch , the clothing retailer that appeals to the college set with blond-haired, blue-eyed models, was sued yesterday for racial discrimination, accused of favoring whites for its sales floor jobs.

The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in San Francisco, charges that Abercrombie discriminates against Hispanics, Asians and blacks in its hiring as it seeks to project what the company calls the "classic American" look.

Abercrombie, whose upscale casual clothes have made it one of the hottest companies for teenagers and college students, is accused of favoring whites by concentrating its hiring on certain colleges, fraternities and sororities.

Several Hispanic and Asian plaintiffs said in interviews that when they applied for jobs, store managers steered them to stockroom jobs and away from the sales floor because they did not project what the company called the "A & F look." That look, these plaintiffs said, is overwhelmingly white, judging from the low percentage of minority members who work on the sales floor and from the company's posters and quarterly magazine, which overwhelmingly featured white models.

In an affidavit, a former assistant manager of the Abercrombie store in Faneuil Hall in Boston said that of the 110 employees there, two or three were black, one was Hispanic and the other 106 were white.

"It's quite clear that they go to great pains to make sure all of their managers and assistant managers know what they're looking for and what those managers will be judged on: does your work force fit our all-white image?" said Thomas A. Saenz, vice president for litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

A spokesman for Abercrombie, which is based in New Albany, Ohio, said yesterday that the company would not comment because it had not yet seen the legal papers.

In a guidebook distributed to employees, the "Abercrombie Look Book," the company states: "America is diverse, and we want diversity in our stores. We do not discriminate, and will not tolerate discrimination in hiring based on race, national origin, religion, color, sex, age or disability."

Abercrombie, which outfitted Theodore Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway, was founded in 1892 as a supplier of rugged gear. It filed for bankruptcy in 1977, and its name was sold to Oshman Sporting Goods in 1979 and was resold in 1989 to The Limited. That company revived the brand name with clothes focusing on a youthful lifestyle. In 1996, The Limited spun off Abercrombie, which has about 600 stores and 22,000 employees.

Several plaintiffs said that top managers often visited stores and examined pictures of employees to determine whether they conformed with the Abercrombie & Fitch look. Often, the legal papers say, store managers approach attractive white customers who have the "look" and urge them to apply for sales jobs.

Jennifer Lu said she and four other Asian sales clerks had been fired from an Abercrombie store in Costa Mesa, Calif., after a top corporate official visited last February and told the store's managers there were too many Asian sales clerks. Soon after, she said, six whites were hired to replace them.

"I thought the nation was beyond this type of thing after all these years of civil rights," said Ms. Lu, a senior at the University of California at Irvine. "If Asian people knew that they were doing this, they'd be outraged."

Juancarlos Gomez-Montejano, who worked in sales at an Abercrombie in Santa Monica, said that after a corporate official visited his store, he and four other minority sales workers were terminated, told that the staff was too large. A few weeks later, he said, the store hired five white fraternity members from U.C.L.A.

"It disgusted me because my family name has been on this continent for centuries, and they have the audacity to say I'm not American enough," Mr. Gomez-Montejano said.

He complained to the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, which filed the lawsuit along with the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein.

In a case involving Mr. Gomez-Montejano, the Los Angeles office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission concluded in 2001 that at Abercrombie, "Latinos and blacks, as a class, were denied permanent positions, denied assignments and treated in an unfair manner with regard to recruitment based on their race."

The lawyers are asking for an unspecified amount in back wages and punitive damages, an order putting plaintiffs in their rightful jobs and an injunction ordering the company to end unlawful practices.

"For most of them this is their first job, and the lesson that Abercrombie has taught them is that workplace discrimination continues to exist," said Bill Lann Lee, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs and former director of the Justice Department's civil rights division. "This is a reminder that when you look under a rock, sometimes you find something pretty awful."

The lawyers want the lawsuit to be a class action that will cover both past and future workers and job applicants at Abercrombie.

Eduardo Gonzalez, a junior at Stanford University, said that when he applied last August to the Abercrombie store in Santa Clara, Calif., a manager said he should apply for the stock room or an overnight position.

"It was like, wow, they're pushing me to the only nonvisible jobs, they don't want me to be seen in public," Mr. Gonzalez said. "And it was weird: all the store's posters were white, blond-haired, blue-eyed."

Soon after, a nearby Banana Republic hired him.

"If you look at a store like Banana Republic," Mr. Gonzalez said, "there's a huge difference. Banana Republic has almost all minorities working there."


Seniors,

Based on our unit of Appearance and Discrimination, in what ways does the Abercrombie & Fitch case affect society today? How does that affect you?