You may not have heard of Dov Charney, but his empire is taking over the world. American Apparel, the company he founded in 1997, now employs more than 6 700 people, and has 187 stores in 15 countries.
Ethical shoppers like it because it claims not to outsource manufacturing; everything is made, its website boasts, ”in downtown Los Angeles”. Charney’s employees get more than the minimum wage, healthcare and subsidised lunches.
But all is not squeaky clean in the world of Charney. He has just been sued by an employee called Jeneleen Floyd who alleges that, in the course of a telling-off, he ordered her to pretend to masturbate in front of him. When she didn’t, he turned to her line manager and asked him to do it instead; then, in the very proper words of the lawsuit, filed last week, ”as Mr Swenson complied with Defendant Charney’s instruction, Defendant Charney moved next to him and simulated an oral sex act with him”.
Commentators in the US don’t seem surprised, though. He has been sued before, by women who alleged that he created a ”wholly intolerable” work atmosphere in which women were hired simply because they were ”hot”. One said she was called into his office and offered a vibrator, because ”it’s great during sex”. One of these cases was dismissed; the other two combined and settled. Charney himself has always denied sexual harassment.
He has been known to walk through his office in underwear, and conduct meetings in a thong (his defence — he designs underwear, so why not model it?); during the interview process for an article by Claudine Ko, for the now-defunct Jane magazine, he had oral sex with a female employee in front of Ko; he also masturbated several times.
He once explained that one of the advantages of the downtown LA location of his offices was the neighbourhood strip bar: ”Big companies tend to hire fitting models at a hundred bucks an hour. But they only give you one look. At a strip bar, you get a cross-section of chicks. You’ve got big chicks, little chicks, big-assed chicks, little-assed chicks, chicks with big tits, and chicks with little tits. You couldn’t ask for a better place to fit a shirt.” Then there are his ad campaigns, of seeming pre-pubescents in provocative poses, often taken by Charney himself. ”Gee,” wrote one member of the public, in big black letters across a New York billboard showing a woman bent over double, wearing only tights. ”I wonder why women get raped?”
Last month Charney was named retailer of the year, an honour previously awarded to Calvin Klein, Hugo Boss and Oscar de la Renta. One wonders if his employees would agree. – guardian.co.uk Â