Fashion Victim: American Apparel

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the last few years, you’re probably aware of some of the following: a) American Apparel makes clothing; b) it’s not an American Apparel ad if it doesn’t have butts; followed (natch) by c) Dov Charney likes hot, scantily-clad chicks.

What with all the drama that’s been surrounding the disclosure of the clothing retailer’s controversial hiring tactics, it seems like everyone is up in arms and wants to be the first to call out the company that sells those ubiquitously colourful hoodies with the white strings.

Gawker has been leading the coverage of AA’s “New Look” controversy for awhile—they’ve managed to obtain a smorgasbord of internal memos and guidelines instructing new and existing staff on how to be “on-brand” and represent the store’s ‘new direction,’ described in one email as “Classy-Vintage-Chique [sic]-Late 80′s-Early 90′s-Ralph Lauren-Vogue-Nautical-High end brand,” with the ultimate aim of abandoning the day-glo popularity that helped it soar over the last few years. I guess they cornered the market on rainbow-bright street wear; now Mr. Charney’s set his sights on a “more sophisticated, expensive, classy direction.” Ugh, right.

I guess that means this is out.

To ensure that new hires and current staff remain “on-brand,” store staff will have photos taken of them and sent off for review. All new hires and promotions require this cyber-approval—you’ve got to make the cut before you’re eligible for a pay-check.  Gawker and The Cut blog did some sleuthing and turned up this sound-bite from an insider—“Your looks determine your position and pay rate, not how effective you are at your job”—which, of course, is totally sound business practice for a company that’s on the verge of defaulting its creditors with huge losses of profitability. Of course! Pushing a more expensive and exclusionary aesthetic and letting go of fugglier staff boasting “just ok” work ethics is totally just like scooping money with both fists—pay fewer people less and SIMULTANEOUSLY make people spend more money. Oh Dov, you’re such a mastermind.

This is his job?

Regardless of the company’s absolutely brilliant business plan, I guess a lot of people are getting their (American Apparel on-brand) bloomers in a twist. Gawker managed to get their paws on a full and complete “New Standards” manual that admittedly does seem pretty restricting, but I don’t quite think I’m ready to call foul play and join with the ranks calling AA out for being racist and discriminatory (a quick glance at any of the comments on the articles posted will assure you that the internet is totes giving Charney a mean stink-eye). And while anonymous sources everywhere are perfectly willing to claim that they were told they were “too heavy for that crop top” (seriously…) and that AA only hires skinny white chicks, the fact of the matter is that for all the inappropriate personal stuff that Dov’s had on his legal plate, so far they haven’t had to shell out, oh, I don’t know, $50 million dollars in restitution and had to establish an office for diversity training, like one other notoriously select clothing brand. There’s a dress code at every job, and some are policed more puritanically than others. After the initial story hit, The Cut bloggers spoke to a bunch of different clothing retailers re: their hiring practices and dress codes, and the results are fairly innocuous and predictable: people get hired based on the image of the shop they are going to get hired at. This is a purely business-buiding strategy that’s been at work, blatantly, in our advertisements for decades; AA on-the-floor sales girls are just walking billboards to sell you the duds they’re wearing—if they’re hot and svelte and look like they belong in an AA ad alongside Dov’s ever-changing facial hair, so much the better.

I totally want to buy that... err...

But on the other hand, while I didn’t go to each of the brand’s seven GTA locations to count caucasians versus non-caucasians, the raunchy, Helvetica-on-white, sexualized (and mostly unclothed) print ads don’t always paint AA a consistent shade of pale. What I’m mostly saying is, crap, I agree with Dov. I don’t mind walking into a shop and seeing clean faces wearing the essentially basic pieces in interesting ways—there’s a certain amount of escapism inherent in consumerism. It’s not accidental that the brand image is so structured, nor that the ads are made to resemble porn. I’m not saying I’m 100% with a company who very frankly states that “plus-sized clothing is not our demographic” (source)—a comment and attitude that seems to have forced Dov into a little bit of back-pedalling in a recent interview—but I do applaud them for being relatively transparent when it comes to dealing with it. In the back of your head you can’t help but listen to your own private Dov and go “so they hire hot people? I don’t understand the problem.”

I feel like this whole thing would totally fizzle if, to continue the trend of full-disclosure, the brand would come out and start calling its sales associates “models”—what they essentially are. Would anyone bat an eyelash then?