Archival Consumed: Conscience Undercover

[American Apparel]

The easiest way to add meaning (and marketability) to a commodity item of clothing — T-shirt, sweatshirt, underpants — is to add a logo. It could be a brand name or even a symbol or set of colors: the Nike swoosh, the logo of the Strokes, the colors of Tommy Hilfiger or just the words Abercrombie & Fitch. Absent such a signifier, the clothing is merely clothing. Or at least that’s the general thinking.

But it doesn’t really explain American Apparel, which offers its customers nothing but unlogoed casual wear and now has 2,000 employees cranking out a million garments a week, with sales of $80 million last year. In the past year or so, it has opened 13 retail stores, four of them in New York, and projects that its revenue will nearly double. So what exactly is the American Apparel customer buying? While the garments are simple, the answer is complicated.

Founded in 1997, the company at first sold only to the ”imprintables” trade — screen printers and others who used its clothing as a canvas for original designs or band logos and so on. The emphasis was on quality of fabric, cut, fit and manufacturing. As it expanded, the company started receiving (and courting) attention for being ”sweatshop free.” At a time when practically every clothes maker was off-shoring to cut costs, American Apparel made its wares at a downtown Los Angeles factory where the average industrial worker (usually a Latino immigrant) is paid $13 an hour and gets medical benefits. But today the core of American Apparel’s pitch isn’t quality or social consciousness or logo-escapism. It’s youth and sex.

”We make sexy T-shirts for young people,” summarizes Dov Charney, the 35-year-old company founder. The sex part is certainly apparent in the company’s ads. Yes, there are references to quality and ethics in some of them, but generally in small type under a photograph of a half-naked young woman shot in a raw and vaguely decadent style reminiscent of Larry Clark or Nan Goldin. These ads run not in Utne magazine but in The Village Voice and Vice and in more rarified publications like Beautiful/Decay. Decor at the retail outlets includes Penthouse covers from the 1970’s and 80’s.

Not surprisingly, American Apparel has been accused of using exploitative soft-core pornography. Charney’s view is that it’s too simple to say that he is selling sex. He is selling youth culture, to young people. That’s what guides everything from the no-logoing to the styles and colors he chooses, from the location of his stores (Echo Park in Los Angeles, the Lower East Side in New York) to those provocative ad images, which he says are not just sexy but ”real.” The women aren’t models; they are people whom Charney has met and in some cases photographed himself. And, in fact, most of his retail customers are young women.

Meanwhile, many traditional allies of socially conscious business never quite embraced American Apparel; instead, they criticize it for not having a union. Charney has a detailed and vigorous response, which draws on free-market economics and the Magna Carta, as well as taunts aimed at his ”loser academic” critics. Passionate to the point of mania, he leaves an impression that he might just burst into flames at any moment. Lately, his idiosyncratic lifestyle has received much attention following a curious article in Jane magazine in which the writer vividly described Charney’s sex life, onanism included. Even this fits into Charney’s view of American Apparel’s appeal. ”Young people like honesty,” he shrugs.

Putting the marketing emphasis on youth and sex, he says, doesn’t mean he cares less about treating his workers ethically. But he doesn’t think trumpeting work conditions will help him compete with multinationals and have stores all over the world, which he sees as more of a victory for socially aware business than unionizing. Charney pulls out a copy of a book called ”The 48 Laws of Power” and cites No. 13, which suggests that to get what you want you must appeal to the self-interest of others, not their mercy. ”That’s the problem with the antisweatshop movement,” he says, snapping the book closed. ”You’re not going to get customers walking into stores by asking for mercy and gratitude. Appeal to people’s self-interest.”

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[This installment of the Consumed column appeared in the August 1, 2004, New York Times Magazine; it was posted on this site some time much later, despite the fiddled-with time/date stamp.]