American Apparel - Press Center - Recent & Provocative Ads

>>>New York Times Magazine- April 23, 2006 - And You Thought Abercrombie & Fitch Was Pushing It? Everything you ever wanted to know about Dov Charney but were afraid to ask. read full article



Inc - September 2005 - Dov Charney, Like It or Not
American Apparel is exploding, and sometimes it appears its founder might do the same. All id, all the time — is this any way to run a $250 million company?

read full article

In the basement of the store, it's a manic enterprise—boxes are unpacked, shirts are folded, a guy is taping up tiny plastic bags that Charney plans to stuff with "little underwears." The bags, he explains, save money because they increase the density on the floor. Initially, men's briefs struggled. But since being bagged and placed in bins at the entrances, they've become a bestseller. That's found money—the underwears are made from fabric scraps. "I think if we can get another $400,000 out of this space, we're golden," Charney says of the basement storeroom. 'this store is a prototype store; there should be nothing wrong. What we're doing is getting this one right and then we spread like an infection."
He's recently come to the realization that one reason his stores—which, it should be noted, break their own records regularly—are not as successful as he'd like is that the makeup of the floor staff is just a bit off. The makeup of AA's staff is a mad science that is hard to teach—or even explain. Right now, Charney feels there's no one here he can trust to do it, and so he's interviewing staff himself—hundreds of prospective workers a week. "I made a mistake with these stores," he says. "I didn't do it myself and it's wrong. So I've had to let people go and there's nothing that I hate more than having to get rid of kids. It breaks their hearts. But you know what? It affects sales. Should garment workers at my factory suffer because we f—– up casting?"
"What I'm looking for is style—that's not something you can teach a person. You have it or you don't. Let's say one girl has an acne problem but good style, while another is beautiful but has no style. I'm picking acne!"

"Wherever there are young people with a little creativity and a little money," he says, "we'll be there." With a few exceptions, his stores are tracking 10 times the rent.
"Give me the chance of going to Harvard or being where Google started and I want to be there making $3 an hour sweeping their floors. Or Apple when Steve Jobs started it. 'maybe I'm delusional but that's what I think American Apparel is."


New York Times Magazine- August 1, 2004 -Conscience Undercover

read full article

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. but? so thin. rips easily. ..?
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. frequent backpg of Chicago Reader.
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.

Ad Age - August 29, 2005 -Media Guy Slips Into Coma; Are Print Ads to Blame?

read full article

Say what you will about AmAp and its famously pervy founder, Dov Charney, who is the mastermind behind the ongoing campaign. His ads are not only hot (they show his sexy employees modeling the merch) and briskly reinforce the brand message (which is about well-constructed, no-frills, eminently wearable, sweatshop-free clothing), but are refreshingly not celebrity-obsessed. And the ads have a genuinely interesting narrative through-line (the new "¡Viva Mexico!" ad, for instance, stars a guy named Eduardo who is helping to open AmAp's store in Mexico).