American Apparel CEO Dov Charney: 'I Don't Believe In Made In The USA'

American Apparel CEO Dov Charney, aka the guy pictured in the wikipedia’s definition of “sleazy,” recently said that he’s not so into the one thing that makes his company redeemable — the practice of making his clothes in America. For the most part, sans that immigration scandal.

Actual quotes…

So it’s a surprise when Charney declares, “I don’t believe in ‘made in U.S.A.,’ really, but that’s a secret. You can say I said it’s off the record, but then you can say I said it’s off the record, and say it. Because it’s ‘off the record’ hypothetically speaking, OK?”

But really, in his interview with Buzzfeed, Charney meant, like, companies should be able to produce products without borders. You know, like the doctors.

“My vision is a kind of America for everyone, like where people could come and go and it really doesn’t matter where you make the product, it’s about paying a fair wage — but right now, we have a kind of society with borders, and on one side of the border, people have money and on the other side of the border they don’t,” he says. “So Europe does, Africa doesn’t. Right? Vietnam doesn’t, Japan does. This is, like, all these lines. What we’re trying to do is build a business that’s very futuristic in the sense that we don’t want to rely on these labor inequalities that are not going to be sustainable forever anyway.”

Inserted at the bottom of the article are recordings of Charney’s words during the interview. Considering his gross and inappropriate history of media meetings, seems smart for a reporter to cover covering her ass by embedding audio.

Also: After facing near bankruptcy in 2010 but limping back and becoming public only to spend the rest of the time fighting sexual harassment lawsuit from female employees, American Apparel hasn’t turned a profit since 2009. The company stock has also fallen dramatically and closed at below $1 last week. But Charney says the financial world is all bullshit anyway. We all saw The Wolf of Wall Street amirite?

“The stock market is a voting machine and eventually becomes a weighing machine at certain points in the trajectory of a company, and proof comes at the moment of weighing,” he explains. “For example, when Facebook went public, they were saying, voting, they’re like, ‘Bury Mark Zuckerberg! We hate that guy!’ But I was watching this morning a little web blurb on one of the finance blogs and they said, ‘He is on fire.’ And I said, I wish I could just take this video, put it in my pocket, and play it to everyone one year ago. And the same thing happened to Netflix.”