Documentary series on the downfall of American Apparel

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/21/documentary-series-on-the-downfall-of-american-apparel.html

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Oh. Well, there goes that idea.

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Another founder who discovered that being a hipster edgelord isn’t a sustainable persona for someone who also wants to be considered a serious business leader.

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I never got American Apparel for two reasons:

  1. Their stuff was paper-thin. No decent textiles which is probably why they were somewhat able to compete with sweatshop prices.

  2. Why do you need jail-baity ads?

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I so wanted to like American Apparel. They defended their workforce and brought jobs to my home town. But…

  1. The designs were so meh to me, especially on women - they seemed to clash with rather than complement the female form.
  2. Why do you need heroin chic ads?
  3. Dude.
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Yeah. Got that vibe, too.

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I’ve only owned tshirts and a couple zipper hoodies from them. The shirts were OK, IMO. The zipper hoodies were actually pretty damn good.
One thing I liked about the shirts was they were cut well - for me - and I liked the thinner fabric. Not a huge fan of “heavy weight” ones.

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To the Tib Stnerrot

So when Vice started out, as an “alt” paper, those American Apparel ads were endless. It seemed a symbiotic relation. My memory was it was hard to tell the difference, “cutting edge” paper versus “cutting edge” advertising.

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I could smell the bath salts all the way from here in TX.

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Well, duh. If you are trying to sell t-shirts, probably using a topless model is missing the mark. I’m not an expert in fashion or anything but, jeeze…

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I remember seeing the first advertisements in Chicago’s “Lumpin” magazine about 20 years ago. From what I can recall it was pretty tame stuff. I don’t recall them going all creepy back then. It seemed like it got really bad just before Charney was ousted.

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You can argue that Jobs pulled this off, but how many people are Jobs?

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I thought the idea was that she looked cold – better buy her a T-shirt! Or better, a sweatshirt!

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I thought this was just another “Quibi: Who needs another streaming service?” dig, but apparently, Quibi really is shutting down. Maybe the makers of this can make a new documentary on the folly of making a mobile-based streaming service the year people are stuck at home.

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I just learned today that Quibi’s entire model was based on skirting union costs. By playing credits between segments, they could claim that they were individual episodes and skirt SAG and WGA minimums. Fuck 'em.

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Today I learned that Quibi is a thing and also that Quibi is no longer a thing.

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I’d be interested since I knew people that knew/dated Dov when I lived in NYC, the no thanks on Quibi.

Then I saw this:

Hopefully available elsewhere soon.

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There really need to be some business school lectures on why raping your employees is a bad practice.

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It’s really adding insult to injury to the very last, isn’t it?

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