Sweat
Jon Meyer, The McGill Daily (McGill University)
American Apparel founder speaks about sex, youth, and the aftertaste of social justice
MONTREAL (CUP) - From his office in downtown L.A., Dov Charney is pontificating over the phone about the finer points of the apparel industry. He interrupts himself, screaming to his assistant, "Maria could you bring me a brush for Sophia, please. I want to brush her." He returns to the phone, "I'm going to wash my dog but I want to brush her first; while we're on the phone is a good opportunity." Sometimes it's hard to believe this is the man who's found so much success and media attention.
Charney, a native of Montr‚al, is the notoriously eccentric founder of the fast-growing label American Apparel. Over the past seven years, the company has grabbed headlines by producing high quality clothing without baroque details. Even better, it claims to have broken the exploitative clothing industry framework - sweatshops - through a production process Charney dubs "hyper-capitalist-socialist-fusion."
Whether American Apparel's success is built on an original business model or more conventional foundations is a matter of debate. Have Charney and his company, under cover of convenient rhetoric, merely traded one form of exploitation for another?
Since American Apparel found mainstream success two years ago, a new side of the company has started to surface. In place of honest labour practices, Charney now fills his boasts with semi-prophetic, misogynist rants about sexuality. So what is Dov Charney - and by extension, American Apparel - actually up to?
'HYPER-CAPITALIST-SOCIALIST-FUSION' MODEL
A lot of the attention surrounding American Apparel has to do with its unique, vertically integrated business model. Every aspect of production, from photo shoots to design and garment assembly, takes place in the company's 800,000 square foot, air-conditioned facility in downtown L.A. Employees are paid about $12 an hour, nearly twice the California minimum wage of $6.75. The company also offers its workers a host of benefits, including massages, English as a second language classes, and immigration support.
"By relentlessly pursuing efficiencies in management and production, we aim to make the use of exploitative labour tactics not only unnecessary but actually counterproductive," Charney wrote to Adbusters magazine in July 2002. He added, "We are bucking the trend in globalisation that seeks profits through cheap offshore labour."
Over the past four years, the company has shown its mission may be possible by growing exponentially, doubling sales revenue every year.
With this approach to production, American Apparel stands head and shoulders above the California garment industry norm. In an October 2002 PBS news story on American Apparel, Kimi Lee, director of L.A.'s Garment Worker Center, said the picture for other California garment workers was much bleaker.
"These workers all face what we call sweatshops, where it's dirty, dusty, rats, cockroaches, no breaks," Lee said. "They can't go to the bathroom sometimes. They have to wait until the end of the day or their pay is docked. They work 15, 16 hours a day. Their time cards are falsified. It gets punched out at 5 p.m., but they stay until 8 p.m. or 9 p.m."
But not everyone thinks American Apparel is the ideal employer. Organised labour, in particular, has criticised Charney and his company for maintaining a non-union workplace. They point out that all of American Apparel's benefits and good labour practices depend on the whims of management.
Doug Watterman, a spokesperson for Team X, an organised labour-backed garment production initiative, said workers need more of a formal standing vis-a-vis management.
"The concept of worker ownership, the concept of parity between salaries and earnings that a management team earn and take, versus what the workers who are actually doing the work and making it possible for everybody to make salaries, I think is an important fact," Watterman told PBS News.
The garment industry establishment criticises American Apparel from another angle. It claims Charney's business model is not widely applicable. Unlike most garment companies, American Apparel doesn't change from season to season and makes extremely basic clothing, virtually free of details. The company doesn't work with complex fabrics like denim, and produces very few different garments compared to its larger competitors.
This undermines Charney's claim his business model provides a superior way to produce apparel as it lacks vital scalability. We still don't know if the "hyper-capitalist-socialist-fusion" model can be expanded to a larger size.
SWEATSHOPS SAVE, BUT SEX SELLS
While Charney says American Apparel does represent a progressive business model, he doesn't think the company's success is founded on its politics alone.
"I think that sweatshop-free is an aftertaste. Even before we started sweatshop-free, and even before our products were made in a vertically-integrated environment, our products were popular," he said over the phone.
In a recent interview with the New York Times, Charney referenced a Machiavellian marketing book called The 48 Laws of Power. Citing rule 13, which states in order to be successful one must appeal to the self-interest of others, he argued, "That's the problem with the anti-sweatshop movement. You're not going to get customers walking into stores by asking for mercy and gratitude. Appeal to people's self-interest."
Charney seems to be undermining the idea his success is rooted in his sweatshop-free politics in order to legitimise his own business acumen. If the company is successful because of its efficient mode of production and ingenious marketing strategy, Charney can avoid the charge he is simply targeting a niche market.
Although few would disagree that the cut and colour of American Apparel plays a large role in its success, it is doubtful the company would have gained such rapid popularity without promoting the politics of its production. Everything - from its ads to its shopping bags - is inscribed with its "sweatshop-free" tagline. Only two years ago, Charney was trumpeting sweatshop-free in the anti-capitalist press.
American Apparel's success is most likely a mixture of his vertically integrated business model and its appeal to those who would align themselves with sweatshop-free politics, in addition to his sexually charged marketing strategy.
Charney says sex is the driving force that motivates and mobilises youth. American Apparel pays homage to this drive, and though the company has been criticised for its licentious imagery, Charney proudly rejects any complaints. ("It's like, fuck you, man.")
The overtones of his philosophy are evident in everything the company does. Every American Apparel advertisement exudes sex. Each store is decorated with the same salacious light-boxes and vintage Penthouse magazines. On the company's website, you can even watch streaming video of the photo shoots for the bras and panties sold online.
Using sex as a selling point is hardly a new idea. But it's also an uneasy fit with American Apparel's wholesome production process. Charney has been criticised for paradoxically censuring the exploitation of the worker, while pushing the instrumental use of sexuality and women.
AGING VANGUARD OF A YOUTH REVOLUTION?
Arguing that his philosophy is, in fact, consistent, Charney rejects the claim that his company exploits women. He says his politics merely reflect the zeitgeist of youth. At 35, Charney sees himself at the forefront of a new cultural movement. He thinks his company is leading the charge toward a new kind of sexual liberation.
"I'm a little bit elitist; I don't look at what the mainstream is doing," he said. "I look at what the innovators are doing. It'll all trickle down later. Generation Y hasn't come out of university - some have, but most haven't. When Generation Y completely matures, there'll be a new plateau of adults. There's going to be an enormous population surge of young adults, and when that happens we're going to enter a period of substance."
He thinks the conflict between politically correct boomer culture and the concerns of youth is reaching a boiling point.
"I don't think young people can embrace the culture of the boomers. . . . They're not going to put up with all the rules that the establishment has foisted upon them."
For Charney, the values of the middle-aged North Americans are simply not in sync with youth culture and, by extension, American Apparel. The most important divergence between the two generations is their attitudes toward sex. "The boomers are so into family values right now because they have kids. They're getting older. Their sexual freedom isn't as important."
Political correctness, in his opinion, has created an unbalanced culture that's unnaturally constraining. "Feminism is extremely restrictive. You can't call a woman a bitch, you can't call her this, you can't call her that. But that's what life's really like. Yet, she can do whatever she wants. It's out of balance and that's why young people haven't embraced feminism, because it's out of balance."
Charney's rant against the "lawsuit culture" of the West seems convenient, considering the man is rumoured to sleep with each and every one of his female models, and once masturbated in front of an interviewer from Jane Magazine.
He pursues his point. "Out of a thousand sexual harassment claims, how many do you think are exploitive? There are almost no sexual harassment charges from men against women. They're not acceptable; it's considered that only women are the victims."
"Women initiate most domestic violence, yet out of a thousand cases of domestic violence, maybe one is involving a man." And this, Charney decries, "has made a victim culture out of women."
It's unclear where Charney gets his facts. According to the most recent survey done by the U.S. Department of Justice, 85 per cent of victimisations by intimate partners in 2001 were against women. Even if Charney is referring to unreported face-slaps, these sorts of instances pale compared to the 1,247 women (versus 440 men) who were killed in 2000 by an intimate partner.
"WITHOUT WOMEN IN MY COMPANY, WE'D BE FUCKED"
Charney's ranting obscures his ideals. He valorises a kind of consensual, unfettered sexual freedom, a liberty that's currently limited by moral conservatives and what he calls "PC restrictionists." For Charney, it's not about exploiting women - he uses men in his advertising, too - it's about unrestricted sexuality.
Charney appreciates the professional contributions of women, "I don't want to be paraded around like I'm trying to demean women. That's not my point. I love women. I care for women. They make great contributions to American Apparel."
In fact, 60 per cent of his high-ranking administrative employees are women. Among his more famous quotes is his frank praise, "Without women in my company, we'd be fucked."
Ending on a note of concern, he explains, "I want to be cautious, because this is a new territory, you know, this sexual territory. . . . It's not that we condone exploitation. You'd be missing the point. It's not that sexual aggression towards women is acceptable. It's a crime and should remain that way."
Charney envisions his company leading a revolutionary movement. "Young people are going to redefine what's wrong and what's right, and they're going to create new freedoms, freedom of thought, freedom to be nasty, and freedom to explore the bounds of life. That's what young people need."
Caution is not a term often associated with Charney. He flippantly trivialises domestic abuse and sexual harassment, and his reductive dismissal of feminism is ludicrous. Charney levels unsubstantiated complaints and caricatures one of the most important civil rights movements of the last 30 years. He clearly has it out for what he thinks is the killjoy of youth, but his animosity is misguided and downright offensive.
It would seem that, in the interest of his company, Charney has adopted an essentialised view of sexual desire that legitimises American Apparel's loin-clenching advertising. Charney himself values his marketing strategy above everything else. As a result, in order for him to maintain that he eschews a socially progressive politics, he must defend a mindset that appeals to the libido of youth. He's getting caught up in his own controversy, situating himself in an ethical quagmire he might not be able to escape from.
Charney and his quick mind have gotten him this far. But as the generation he claims to speak for acquires power with every year, he himself crawls ever closer to 40.