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Dov Charney: the man who put the sleaze factor into American Apparel

Dov Charney, former CEO of American Apparel .Dov Charney, previous CEO of United states Apparel . Photo: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A sense of sleaze has actually long surrounded Dov Charney, the United states Apparel founder who was fired last night.

Above a few official intimate harassment lawsuits (that have been dismissed or settled), x-rated rumours have swirled round the 45-year-old. He's well-known for buying employees vibrators as presents; for asking them to masturbate facing him; for walking the factory flooring in his underpants, or using a sock where in fact the underpants might-have-been. In 2004, a female journalist advertised he had dental sex with a female worker while being interviewed for Jane mag.

Definately not becoming ashamed, Charney has seemed proud of his attitude to sex, and a feeling of severe libertarianism has been promoted by the brand. In 2008, in official court documents, solicitors defending Charney said: "US attire is a sexually charged workplace in which workers of both genders handle sexual conduct, address and photos as part of their tasks." For the reason that 2004 interview, Charney stated: "i'm a bit of a dirty man, but men and women that way at this time." would it be, in 2014, that individuals don't like it more?

Charney began his career importing T-shirts inside the indigenous Montreal and established American Apparel in la in 1997. By 2005, the company was stated among fastest-growing in america. With regards to arrived in Britain, in 2004, starting its very first shop on Carnaby Street in London, United states Apparel rapidly flourished, becoming so ubiquitous one of the fashion-aware it was known as the Guardian's brand of the entire year in 2008. Charney had been known to be an obsessive, hands-on frontrunner regarding the business, dedicated to creating the garments ethically, and even though many former employees hated him, others would evangelically sing his praises.

an US Apparel advertisement from 2006American attire became popular on level of a 1980s fashion revival. Its most well-known designs had been reminiscent of the outfits donned by Kelly Le Brock in Weird Science: brightly coloured, sportswear tips and body-con pieces. Tees and hoodies had been staples, since had been leotards with plunging necklines and racy cutouts. Among shop's first huge hits in the UK, lurex leggings obtainable in all colours into the Smarties tube, became streetwear shorthand when it comes to turn-of-the-decade East London hipster.

an American Apparel advertisement from 2006.

The United states Apparel appearance spoke to your club kids of Brooklyn and East London equally their particular lifestyle became an aspiration for stylish public. But this wasn't the hipster as a skill pupil, reading Camus within their bedroom. Instead, the company's marketing in-house imagery were often wilfully shocking, featuring very young-looking, contorted ladies, frequently with pubic tresses and hard nipples showing through mesh leotards and lace knickers. Seemingly unretouched, with deliberately amateurish lighting, a hipster readers' spouses aesthetic permeated the brand identification. United states Apparel proudly waved the flag for a tremendously 1970s notion of louche libertarianism, a sleazy aesthetic which includes spearheaded, also, because of the . Richardson's claims, in an interview, that he had been simply "working together and checking out sex and taking pictures", happen broadly satisfied with scepticism and derision.

American Apparel has long been about a lifestyle, and facets of that life style at this time feel far from fashionable. All that is left, now, would be the tops and skirts and lurex-covered leggings, and an organization left distancing itself from its founder since it tries to keep a number of its sheen.

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