American Apparel's New Image

By: Rob WalkerFri May 9, 2008 at 5:06 PM

Employees at the American Apparel's Los Angeles factory. | photograph by Jeff Minton

In the beginning, American Apparel put a "sweatshop free" label on its t-shirts. But sex turned out to be a better sell than good labor practices. Lessons in the limits of altruism.

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Provocateur: CEO Dov Charney, makes no apologies for American Apparel's racy image. | photograph by Jeff Minton

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The conversation paused when two designers working on men's underwear appeared. They had just come from the factory floor, carrying several pairs of underwear that had been manufactured about 10 minutes earlier. Charney said they'd already gone through about 30 prototypes. "Imagine if we were outsourcing through China!"

He checked with me, then took off his pants and underwear and started trying on the samples. "I need a thin Sharpie," he said, taking off one pair and putting on another. He wrote on the removed pair: Good but tighter. There was a great deal of chatter about the legs and the waist, about taking in a half-inch, about the fact that the factory shift was going to end soon. "This is a great pair that I have on right now," Charney suddenly announced.

It's easy to get distracted by the mental image of a pantsless chief executive. But the moment offers a gritty snapshot of the company -- both its notorious aspects and its less-heralded ones. It showed things that the public image obscured: responsiveness to customer requests, designers' excitement, the advantages of a short elevator ride from the shop floor to the CEO's office.

As we resumed the conversation, Charney pointed out that the newer and more aggressively attention-getting image did not mean that American Apparel had watered down its production practices -- it just made less of an effort to tell consumers about them. The benefits the company offers to its workers had, in fact, increased. It still marketed the working conditions at American Apparel, but mostly in recruiting commercials that ran in Los Angeles and aimed at attracting the best available workers. (The waiting list for a manufacturing job there is a year long.)

It's not that he cares less about treating his workers ethically, Charney insisted; it's that he doesn't think trumpeting work conditions will help him compete. Sure, he hoped quality or social consciousness or a distaste for logos would each attract some consumers. But he also hoped that selling a sexed-up version of youth culture to young people would attract others, and hopefully in greater numbers. If ethics draws in some consumers, great. But for others who respond to different rationales, he'll provide those, too.

The product didn't change; the rationale for buying it did.