Dov Charney gave a rare on-camera interview to CNBC which aired today. In it, the founder of hipster t-shirt-and-scrunchy supplier American Apparel laughed off his company's ongoing financial troubles. Charney thinks that "you're casting it from the wrong perspective" if you point out that the company he founded is…
American Apparel has again run afoul of U.K. authorities for its advertising. In 2009, the company was censured for appearing to sexualize a child. Now, eight American Apparel ads have been banned in the U.K. by the Advertising Standards Authority for featuring "gratuitous" nudity and depicting young women in an…
Irene Morales, the 21-year-old former American Apparel manager who said last year that the company's notoriously sleazy founder, Dov Charney, had sexually harassed her since she was 17, will have to settle her case behind closed doors. The official reason for tossing the original $260 million lawsuit, originally…
Details have emerged of American Apparel's new George Soros-backed credit line — and they do not look good for the company. American Apparel is swapping out a $75 million Bank of America line of credit for an $80 million loan from Soros' company Crystal Financial. For the privilege, its interest rate will effectively…
American Apparel is changing its way of doing business. The troubled hipster clothier — so renowned as a soft touch for shoplifters that Shoplifting From American Apparel is a novel that exists — is cutting perhaps the last tie to its earlier, looser, corporate culture. It is installing radio-frequency ID tags on all…
In news that will surprise absolutely nobody who has ever tried to buy anything anywhere in Paris, a survey of shoppers found that the Champs-Elysées rates 22nd out of 30 great world shopping streets for customer service. Many people reported that sales assistants at the luxury stores that line the boulevard showed…
Dov Charney would like you to know that he is still kicking around. He spent a day in Toronto with a writer for the magazine Flaunt, and in the resulting 6,000-word piece he comes across as alternately petulant, clever, impassioned, self-absorbed, and utterly unaware of his own encroaching irrelevance.
A tipster tells us that the book world is buzzing about a major book deal made today. Apparently American Apparel's director of marketing got a half a million dollars as an advance for a book called Confessions. Our confidant writes,
There's an update in the American Apparel plus-size model search debacle: The Creative Director has asked Nancy Upton — the woman who won the contest but will not be recognized as the winner — to come and check out the company. And meet, face-to-face.
Last year, April Flores — adult film star, erotic performer and plus-size beauty — visited an American Apparel showroom in an attempt to find pieces for her plus-sized clothing line. She was told that AA did not have plus-sized items because "that's not our demographic." Tuesday, the company's Creative Director, Iris…
As you may recall, American Apparel celebrated adding plus-size clothing to their stores by announcing a search for "booty-ful" models. The winner was supposed to be a woman who needs "a little extra wiggle room" and has a "fresh face and curvaceous bod." Nancy Upton entered the contest, submitting photographs of…
The investors that saved American Apparel from bankruptcy four months ago are selling their stock in the company. A consortium of investors bought $15 million worth of American Apparel shares at 90 cents a pop back in March is looking to sell those shares now that AA is trading at around 97 cents; the investors also…
There are probably any number of reasons why this Manchester American Apparel store had its windows smashed during the civil unrest that has been roiling in the U.K. but none of the rioters appear to have stolen any clothes. Maybe the police showed up just in the nick of time. Maybe everyone had just finished looting…
American Apparel finally had a quarter where the company's financial results weren't a total disaster. Same-store sales, a key measure of retail health, didn't plummet. They didn't rise, either, but they didn't fall! This is the first time that's happened since the month of January, 2009. And the company, which had a…
American Apparel released its earnings report for the first three months of 2011 yesterday. It will probably come as no surprise to you that the numbers are...bad.
CEO Dov Charney has reported a lowered stake of 45.6 percent in the company, after a recent stake sale to a group of private investors.
Dov Charney's company came within a polyester-wrapped serger thread of bankruptcy last week, when a coalition of Canadian investors threw American Apparel a $43 million lifeline. But all that hasn't dented Charney's famously vivid sense of destiny. "People didn't believe in Amazon for many years, but it ended up…
Without a new influx of cash, t-shirt-and-neon-thong-bodysuit purveyor American Apparel is facing bankruptcy. The company — which lost $86.3 million last year, and finished the month of February with just $5.3 million in cash on hand — has warned that its Chapter 11 filing may come as soon as April 30. But hark! On…
Dov Charney is Lenny Bruce. Dov Charney is Martin Luther King, Jr. Dov Charney is Duddy Kravitz. Dov Charney is Hugh Hefner in the '70s. Dov Charney is a punching-bag of the politically correct left and a victim of the religious right. Dov Charney is, according to his dad, "not great at tact." Dov Charney is,…
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