American Apparel is the worst company in the world that doesn’t make rape porn, sell gasoline, or supply the Pentagon. Seriously.
How can the asshole who owns the company reconcile his supposed concern for the well-being of his factory workers with the fact that he consistently dehumanizes women in his personal life, at his office, and in his advertisements? I’m aware of the fact that I’m not the first person to call attention to the misogynistic implications of the ads or the company’s owner’s behavior, but I have what might be a different take on the whole thing than most people do.
I lived in LA when that company opened its first retail stores in 2003, one of which was just down the street from my house. Someone told me it was a good place to get plain t-shirts and sweatshirts and that I should check the place out, so I went in there and paid some ludicrous amount of money for a green t-shirt that didn’t fit and decided the store sucked. I mean, yeah I thought it was kind of cool that they were making their shirts in downtown LA and were paying their workers a little more than the local taco stand did, but I was pretty unimpressed.
I knew, because they had opened a location in my stupid hipster neighborhood, that the people behind American Apparel thought they were putting out a hip product for the “counter-cultural” types paying $1300 rent in Los Feliz and Silver Lake. The area was already lousy with overpriced thrift stores (”vintage boutiques”) and faux-50s health food diners, so American Apparel fit right in.
The problem with American Apparel when its stores first opened was that the product line was basically a rehash of Au Coton. It didn’t work in 1986, either. No one wants to spend twenty bucks on a plain t-shirt just because some guy tells them he’s hiring Mexicans in LA instead of Mexicans in Mexico City to make it. Unless, of course, you tell that person that paying twenty bucks for that t-shirt will make them cooler than the fool with the two-dollar thrift store t-shirt.
That’s what happened. Dov Charney, the CEO, founder, and head pervert of American Apparel figured out that, instead of just selling plain t-shirts and sweatshirts, he could start pumping out the silly little 80s-style garments that were inching onto the narrow asses of hipsters in LA and New York and make himself a billion bucks in the process. He saw that hipsterism was going to be the next big thing, that he could get rich selling lifestyle garments to people who think they’re iconoclasts for listening to Beck. So he put out skinny jeans in ugly colors, he put out headbands and gym shorts that allow people like Devendra Banhart to feel retro and avant garde at the same time, and he put out shiny, ill-fitting dresses and shirts for women who don’t eat. Hipsters love ugly clothes, and Dov is all over it.
I almost want to blame Dov Charney for hipsterism. His store is a mecca for people who think they’re making the world a better, hipper place by overvaluing ugly cotton clothing, and it’s the place people go when they’re ready to make the belated move from dance music to lame corporate “indie” rock. I definitely blame Dov Charney for the dorkification of some of the more interesting urban areas in this country. I mean, once you see an American Apparel store go up in a neighborhood, you can pretty much assume that any real counter-cultural activity going on in the area is over and that any interesting residents will be moving elsewhere, afterward to be replaced by Radiohead fans with Apple computers and sparrow tattoos who don’t mind paying triple the current rents.
Whether he made hispterism the asshole trend of the decade or not, he’s making sure it spreads and doesn’t go away, so fuck him for that alone.
But did I mention that he likes to sexually harass his employees, the women he does business with, and everyone else he comes across who owns a vagina (he’s been sued at least 5 times for it)? Did I mention that his company’s advertisements (which are done in-house and can’t be blamed on anyone else) are basically kitschy 70s porn? Did I forget to say that he coerces the “models” he hires to create that 70s porn into letting him pork them, often by warning them that their jobs depend on it? Oh yeah, he also jacked off on someone and he likes to walk around the office naked, firing anyone who doesn’t like it. He’s a bad guy.
I suppose it isn’t much of a surprising story. Total geek in high school (I mean, fuck, his name is Dov Charney… and did you see him?), hated by everyone, can’t get anyone to touch his wiener, gets rich and powerful, then takes it out on the women he has some authority over and pretends it’s just one big fun sex party.
The thing is, this guy’s trying to get us all on board with his plan to dehumanize women and treat them like jizz mops. The women in his ads are all very, very young. Some of them don’t look old enough to drive, but he’s got them in all kinds of degrading, pornorific poses. Check it, yo:
(Peep the graffiti on that last one. Good shit.)
So, here we see it again: sex, especially sex in which women (preferrably ones that are still practically children) are being treated like fifi bags, sells. Especially to the kinds of people who are stupid enough to think being a hipster is iconoclastic in any sense AT ALL, or who think that wearing ugly, overpriced clothes says anything about you except that you are gullible and have too much money to waste.
Oh, and have a look at this.
43 Comments
July 30, 2008 at 6:10 am
Someone out there might think that you over-stating your point for effect. But I would like to say that, in less words, that the above is exactly what my hometown of Tempe is now like. We used to have a vibrant downtown community of cute family-owned vegan cafeterias, the largest co-op in the state, and many real retro stores. By “real” I mean selling real second-hand clothes and household items actually from some long lost era.
Then that went away. Some asshole got the idea, around the time that the land prices and housing market exploded, that downtown Tempe wasn’t “hip” enough for the million-dollar condos going in on the shore of our man-made puddle (because we’ve polluted and paved the valley so much that all the real water has long since dried up). Out go the subversive bookstores, co-ops, vegan cafeterias, tattoo parlors, and antique stores, and in go American Apparel, two million cell phone stores, abstract galleries of inaffordable mass-produced “art”, an overpriced Aveda salon, and enough chain-food like Chiles and Starbucks to chase out every single staple of my childhood.
My town is dead. Everyone I know that really really likes American Apparel (really), also carries around an Apple laptop, bitches about how the university website isn’t compatible with their poor technology choice, and gossips about how they got high and fucked some random person to the new Radiohead CD. I wish I was joking.
The icing on the shit cake, of course, is that this entire culture is built upon porn and consumerism and perpetuated by the idolization of pimps and dealers.
And good God, those advertisings are horrible. I wish I could unsee them.
July 30, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Oh no! My favorite neighborhood in the city just got an American Apparel… and a Chipotle… I’m starting to get nervous.
July 30, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Hipsters are f8cking stupid. Sorry, it just had to be said - about the latest crop of zombie consumers.
July 30, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Gee, I always just hated American Apparel because they don’t make clothes that fit anyone with breasts or hips or a butt. It was purely because their clothes just plain blew.
Now I have even MORE reason to hate them, on an ideological level. yay!
My best friend LOVES American Apparel and I was tempted to get her a whole bunch of their kneesocks for her birthday, but now I can’t ever give them any of my money.
July 30, 2008 at 5:29 pm
I suppose it isn’t much of a surprising story. Total geek in high school (I mean, fuck, his name is Dov Charney… and did you see him?), hated by everyone, can’t get anyone to touch his wiener, gets rich and powerful, then takes it out on the women he has some authority over and pretends it’s just one big fun sex party.
American Apparel’s Charney probably should be in jail, but what’s wrong with his name? Anti-semitism now?
July 30, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Oh, come on, for fuck’s sake. I was saying he has an odd name and probably got made fun of, and that he looks like a sleaze. I don’t know what ethnicity he is, nor do I give a fuck. For one thing, it’s got nothing do do with what I am talking about AT ALL. I took that goddamned comic down to keep people from derailing by pretending I’m some kind of racist, which is patently fucking absurd, and now you’re trolling through my posts looking for something to exaggerate and misinterpret the meaning of. You don’t know who I am, who my friends are, who my family is, or anything else that would give you the information you’d need to make the call on whether I am or am not a racist, so go fuck yourself.
July 30, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Euw, those ads are just…. How the hell are they allowed to be put on billboards? Aren’t there, like, laws in america to stop that kind of stuff? Boards of people and such?
He sounds pretty sick. But of course, he’s rich, so nothing will ever be done about it. Well, and he’s a man of course, which made the chances of anything being done pretty low in the first place.
Although, I’m not really sure what a hipster is, I guess it’s an american thing, or that we just have a different word for it. Scene kids maybe? I don’t know.
Great post ND.
July 30, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Yeah, scene kids is probably it.
July 30, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Just here to say that I’m Jewish, I identify as Jewish religiously, genealogically, and culturally for anyone who wants to know, and I don’t think that Nine-Deuce’s comment was anti-semitic. Dov isn’t exactly the most Jewish name in the world, and I wouldn’t have known unless someone told me that he is Jewish, or was Jewish, because he never identified himself as such.
July 30, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Exactly. In none of the articles I read about Charney did anyone start off by saying, “Charney, CEO of American Apparel, is Jewish…”
July 30, 2008 at 7:17 pm
crankosaur - Chipotle is the devil’s food. I grew up in San Diego, the national capital as far as burritos goes. The first time I ate at Chipotle, I considered writing a treatise on what a burrito is and is not and sending it to their corporate office, along with a petition signed by a million people or so requesting that they admit that they are selling wraps rather than burritos. Did you know it’s owned by McDonalds? And that there’s fucking CORN in the salsa? A travesty.
July 30, 2008 at 7:37 pm
@Jen Isn’t ‘dov’ Hebrew for ‘bear’? Shouldn’t you know that?
Could you maybe source some of this stuff? And not to blogs, but to actual articles. There’s a lot of weird stuff I read and I don’t know how much to believe. That’s a whole lot of hearsay in there.
I totally empathize with the advertisements. They can be a bit much when you’re reading the paper on the train sometimes.
But I wholeheartedly disagree that the clothes are overpriced. When compared to a sweatshop-produced t-shirt, definitely. But paying sewers close to $20 an hour with tons of benefits, including medical and dental? I can imagine their overhead is a little higher than wherever else you buy your clothes.
July 30, 2008 at 7:42 pm
These claims have been blogged and written about so much it’s obscene. I Googled the guy and found out about all of this in the Wikipedia entry and one other article alone.
I’m not comparing the prices to something made in a sweatshop. I am comparing them to the prices one should pay for their “alternative” clothing, at a thrift store. Isn’t it better to reuse things, anyway?
My point is, while what he’s doing may arguably be laudable in one sense, he’s ideologically screwy in that he’s dehumanizing vast numbers of other people in another sense. It’s proof that even liberals are more concerned with just about any social issue than the humanity of women.
July 30, 2008 at 8:18 pm
I don’t see thrift stores as the company’s competitors though. They make new clothes. It’s reckless to say that all “alternative” people that buy American Apparel clothes should just stick to buying thrift store clothes because that’s what is in style for these people. Do you buy anything new? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just buy something used?
About all these claims, the Wikipedia page doesn’t really say much at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dov_Charney#Sexuality_and_controversy
I don’t see the correlation. I’d like to read the other article, if you could post it. I’ve read a lot of stuff, but I’ve never read any testimonials from models that say he screws them or whatever.
I’m a woman and a liberal and I don’t agree with everything the company stands for, but I also appreciate that the company uses models–however risque–that are not all skinny twigs. Haven’t we been fighting THAT forever?
July 30, 2008 at 8:22 pm
@Jen again
http://www.jewlicious.com/?p=4645
It even says he’s Jewish in his Wikipedia entry. I don’t get it?
July 30, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Vanessa - That is so far from germane to what’s being talked about I don’t know what to say. His ethnicity has nothing to do with what’s going on here, and I’ll not discuss it any further. I don’t give a fuck what ethnicity an abuser of women is. He’s still an abuser of women, which is what this blog is about (that and hipsterism).
I’m not saying anything about Charney that isn’t common knowledge. Here’s your article.
As to my description of hipsterism, it isn’t all meant to be taken literally. Effect, effect.
July 30, 2008 at 8:39 pm
I mean, fuck, his name is Dov Charney… and did you see him?), hated by everyone, can’t get anyone to touch his wiener, gets rich and powerful, then takes it out on the women he has some authority over and pretends it’s just one big fun sex party.
Okay, you didn’t realize Dov was a Jewish name, fine. What’s with the rest of your sexist screed?
It would be like my saying that most radical feminists are probably fat chicks that require laws to be written just to get guys to touch them, and so they take it out on society and pretend that all of society hates women. Oh, and it is okay to make fun of people with funny names, for their names.
American Apparel is slime. Dov Charney is slime. I agree.
Possible anti-semitism and misandry and sexist remarks and making fun of people because you think their name is funny or even playing internet psychologist…. I disagree with you that that is okay.
July 30, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Oh, I totally get it. I’d just love to see some articles or something that could back up a lot of this stuff. I read a lot of blogs, but I don’t know how much tabloid or truth are in those. I shop there for sustainable basics that I know wasn’t made by children in China, and I don’t see that ending until I see something that can substantively justify buying from a sweatshop-fueled store in the future.
And I definitely don’t think it sounded anti-Semitic, for the record. I usually just lurk, but I thought a Hebrew speaker would know that ‘bear’ in Hebrew is ‘dov’. Heh, that was my initial inclination to comment, to be honest.
July 30, 2008 at 9:00 pm
huh - There is no “possible” anti-Semitism, sexism, misandry, whatever here. Everyone can find a way to overinterpret if they want to find something to get offended by, but only an MRA would find what I’ve said sexist. And saying his story follows a familiar trajectory is not equal to saying feminists are all fat, ugly “chicks” who want laws passed to get dudes to touch them. I am talking about one guy, you are making a blanket generalization. Your sexism is showing.
What matters in this scenario is that Charney is abusing women, that he puts out ads that dehumanize women, all while he pretends to be some kind of progressive force in the world. It’s sheer hypocrisy.
July 30, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Hey there, I just stumbled on your blog and first let me express my ‘BRAVO!!!’, finally there is someone out here in the blog-o-sphere with substance, analysis and certainly not afraid to throw around the good ol’ F- bomb!!!
As I read, I began wondering, why does American Apparel sound so familiar, as I live in Idaho we here in this funny looking state are thankfully void of certain corporate American companies of such.
With mu brain juices flowing I began to look at the tags on the clothes all over my bed room floor, why is this American Apparel so familiar, and then there it was, tagged on all of my favorite Ani Difranco T’s, and I remembered the sell grrl at an Ani show in Eugene, Or, and her positive shpeel about this certain company. NoW I don’t know how you feel about Ms. D, but I myself am appalled, now more than appalled, I’m Fucking pissed, on many levels, that’s why those shirts barely squeeze over my chest. Someone certainly needs to enlighten Ani, this is just outta hand.
I look forward to reading your blog, I am sure it will soon be the feel good reading of my afternoons.
July 31, 2008 at 12:07 am
Well shit. Apparently I fail at being Jewish because I don’t speak fluent Hebrew. Even though I’m American, not Israeli, we all know that all Jews worthy of not being offended by a poke at someone’s name (and it’s called hyperbole, by the way, so look it up) all must speak Hebrew. It is commanded by Moses.
If all you got from that long post full of handy-dandy information that Nine Deuce has no obligation to share with you is that she is an anti-semite, than I can tell you that not only did you not read the post, you fail at understanding hyperbole and humor using it. I want to beat some ass with my bag of challah now. Maybe cut off some schmeckles.
I have no love for Dov and his assholerly. Mock his name up and down for all I care. It’s not visibly Jewish like “Stein” is. I thought it was Russian or something.
Yeah, and you can totally go ahead and call the Israeli government shitheads now. Because just because someone is Jewish doesn’t mean that someone doesn’t get to criticize them for being jerks. For the record, I think Israel is full of a bunch of war mongering lunatics. And that’s not anti-semetic, because that has nothing to do with being Jewish.
Same with good ol’ Dov here. He’s a douchebag. 9-2 pointed that out with examples of his actual deeds and then poked fun at his misfortunate name, which means something in Hebrew but isn’t exactly recognizibly Jewish like Stein or Moshe.
For example: there was this horrible girl in my second grade class named Jennifer. I hated that girl. I think her name is stupid. Because that name is Irish, I hate Irish people.
That’s totally logicful folks.
July 31, 2008 at 12:11 am
I knew it! My dad’s ancestors are Danish, so I speak Old Norse. Jen must just be pretending to be Jewish to make friends.
I think I’ve figured out, Jen, that I have to write very dry, boring prose if I want to avoid offending people, because the average person can’t seem to pick up sarcasm, satire, irony, comedic exaggeration, or any humor that isn’t a knock-knock joke.
July 31, 2008 at 12:18 am
Interesting post, but I do have to raise an eyebrow at the irony of including a photo of established porn star Lauren Phoenix in with the “some of them don’t look old enough to drive” point. American Apparel has been using actual, successful porn stars - not just fashion models of dubious age posed like porn stars - in their ads for a while now.
Doesn’t make the owner any less of an asshole for the other stuff, or the product any less absurd, but there ya go.
July 31, 2008 at 12:21 am
It’s not really ironic. I don’t doubt that they’re all of age, but the problem is that a lot of them don’t look of age, Phoenix included. That some of them work in porn is most likely lost on 90% or more of the people who see the ads, so the effect remains the same.
July 31, 2008 at 2:27 am
[...] ND posted about her grave issues with the clothing conglomerate American Apparel, which is well known for not [...]
July 31, 2008 at 3:48 am
Dov Charney is a fucking creep.
I care more about the fact that he actually DOES harass people than that his ads are, yep, gross.
But any way you slice it, really: EW.
July 31, 2008 at 4:45 am
You know, I live a couple thousand miles north but you just described one of our ‘funky’ streets. And yes, it’s got an American Apparel. Starbucks at the other end. We might still be winning though. The smell of piss is just as rank around the AA entrance as anywhere else on the street. Please don’t tell me that’s a plus for the hipsters.
I love reading you. You have such an original voice.
July 31, 2008 at 4:48 am
Hipsters love piss. It makes them feel authentic.
Thanks for the compliment!
July 31, 2008 at 4:49 am
Oh my god. I see AK has linked. Now he’ll have two hits to his blog. Himself, and…well, himself.
July 31, 2008 at 5:12 am
My dad’s ancestors are Danish,
Ah, a fellow Scandinavian. I knew there was a reason I liked you…
July 31, 2008 at 1:05 pm
“Hipsters love piss. It makes them feel authentic. “
Lines like this are what keep me coming back here for a read.
July 31, 2008 at 3:31 pm
702 - I have to admit I laughed really hard when I wrote that.
July 31, 2008 at 5:42 pm
@Jen
“Well shit. Apparently I fail at being Jewish because I don’t speak fluent Hebrew.”
I wasn’t saying that. But you interjected as our resident expert of Jewish things (”Just here to say that I’m Jewish, I identify as Jewish religiously, genealogically, and culturally for anyone who wants to know”) and you didn’t get something fairly fundamental.
Frankly, I don’t care how engrossed you are in your faith. But saying you can just recognize names like “Stein” as Jewish? THAT’S why we should listen to you in saying that Nine Deuce’s comments weren’t anti-semitic? It’s like walking into a hospital, saying you’re firmly ingrained in all thinks medical, and then proclaiming that the diagnosis of someone that actually KNEW how to diagnose a patient (see: knew “dov” was Hebrew). Of course, the truth of the matter was that you didn’t have any knowledge more than just about anyone else. I’ll ask my 5-year-old daughter if I need to pick out a “visibly Jewish” name like Stein next time rather than take the word of the supposed expert.
Like I said before, I don’t think the comment was meant like that. For someone that KNOWS that Dov Charney is a Jewish name, however, I can also understand how it could be construed to say that. “I mean, fuck, his name is Avi Rosenstein…” is interchangeable to people that know that his name is from Hebrew, if that helps for any perspective. I just think the comment was a little careless. Just like my aforementioned problem with the ranting hearsay and whatnot, but that’s what I usually love about this blog. I’m usually just a lurker, but I think the company does too much good to just ignore it completely.
July 31, 2008 at 8:02 pm
A little fact that probably escapes those accusing ND of being anti-semitic: nerdy kids with unusual names -Jewish or otherwise- do, in fact, get picked on. Duh.
She never said he DESERVED to get picked on in school, just that he probably did, and has turned into a creep as part of his revenge. It happens.
August 1, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Hell, people picked on me because my last name is unpronounceable. I didn’t think it was because they hate Canadians (and yes, Jews can come from Canada). They also picked on me because I was a nerd. I assume that’s not because they really hate nerds, but because they hate themselves. I think 9-2 should really just stick a swastika somewhere and get it over with.
I never posed myself as the ultimate source knowledge of all things Jewish. I just postulated that I might have a little more insight in judging anti-semitic claims because I am Jewish.
Oh, and hipsters totally love the smell of human excrement. I think it has to do with their innate affinity with shit.
August 2, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Waaay to derail a thread people.
It doesn’t matter if the dude is Jewish or not (or the perceived anti-Semitism). He is a male, exploiting (young) females both personally and professionally.
The images above are softcore porn. They are softcore porn, regardless of being clothed, because of the ‘fuck me’ pose of the (very young) models.
He is a sleezebag. Focus people, focus! :P
August 2, 2008 at 3:12 pm
The images above are softcore porn. They are softcore porn, regardless of being clothed, because of the ‘fuck me’ pose of the (very young) models.
I agree, Stormy.
August 3, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Jen, I’d totally pick on someone if their second name was Unpronounceable. arf.
I had no idea American Apparel were such dirtbirds! Those images are creepy as fuck. We don’t have the advertising campaigns over this side of the Atlantic. I’ve come across them a zillion times when I’m looking for ethical hipster rock t-shirts online though. Thanks for the heads up.
August 5, 2008 at 5:27 pm
1. Mexican =! Latino. Having grown up in San Diego, one would think you’d be aware that 25% of California latinos are NOT Mexican.
2. McDonald’s has been completely divested of Chipotle since 2006
Facts. They’re awesome.
August 6, 2008 at 4:41 am
I know that. It’s exaggeration/generalization for effect. Chipotle may not be owned by McDonald’s anymore, but it still sucks. Nice try, though.
August 6, 2008 at 4:49 pm
These images are porn. Nothing softcore about it when you splay your legs for the lens, with a come on look. Clothing covers the legal loophole, but not the intentions.
I’d also say these are girls, not women. Let’s quit blurring out the difference. The pornstitution positive crowd push that, the same as they call what’s going on ‘choice’.
Someone said possibly not old enough to drive. I’d say barely old enough to legally babysit.
August 9, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Great post. I remember blogging about how horribly sexist and fucked up Dov Charney is when I first started blogging (3 years ago?) It was one of my first posts. (I included that as there are some really great comments from people no longer around the blogosphere like Biting Beaver.) And yet the images have just seemed to have gotten worse. (I even used the image of the socks that you did.) They also have Penthouse and Playboy covers displayed in their stores. AND AA’s anti-union.
Anyway, my friend pointed out a similar company, minus the disgusting CEO and pornographic images of girls that’s out of Canada called Just Shirts. There are plenty of options you can point people to if they want to buy ethically made clothing that is *actually* ethical in all aspects if you look hard enough.
August 16, 2008 at 12:06 pm
All I can think to say is… I’m grateful American Apparel has not creeped its way into Africa yet. I don’t think I could handle those billboards. I already feel like strangling whoever is lining Rivonia (Johannesburg) with billboards for strip clubs.
And… not too get too off topic… but I wonder if it’s a coincidence that the ONLY ads in Rivonia that spell “boulevard” wrong (”boulavard”) are the ones for Teazers. Hmm…
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