by Claire Hoffman

The government is after him because he crusades for illegal-immigrant workers. The lawyers are after him because of the three (so far) sexual-harassment lawsuits. This might be enough to bring down the C.E.O of most publicly traded companies but for American Apparel founder Dov Charney it's just another day at the office.

It’s close to midnight, and Dov Charney, the 39-year-old founder of American Apparel, lies in his bed staring at a massive flat-screen TV. A pair of boat shoes and a white electric muscle massager are on the floor nearby. Behind him, a huge window is lit up with a sweeping view of downtown Los Angeles. Inside his gated, marble, gold-encrusted mansion on a hill, Charney is insulated from the chaos below. His fleet of weathered Mercedeses and Cadillacs, parked bumper to bumper, fills the circular driveway.

Despite the safety of his lair, Charney is not at peace. On CNN, a powdered, sweaty Lou Dobbs is yelling about how “illegals” are destroying the U.S. economy, taking jobs away from real Americans, and taking our money out of the country. Dobbs declares that business owners who employ illegal immigrants deserve to be punished.

“This is a disgusting perennial problem, and we have the opportunity to fix it,” Dobbs sneers.

“He has an anti-immigrant piece every night,” Charney says. Then he shouts at the screen, “I’m an industrialist! I get to call myself an industrialist, you know! When you have a factory with more than a couple hundred people, you get to call yourself an industrialist!”

With a squeak of a vintage sneaker, Michael, a handsome 21-year-old, emerges from a creaky bronze elevator and asks Charney if he needs anything else for the night. Perhaps a stick of gum? Michael is both an assistant of sorts to Charney and one of his half-dozen roommates, mostly twenty-somethings who work at an American Apparel factory a few miles away and come home at night to their boss’s mansion (where Charlie Chaplin once lived), making it their own by hanging posters on the walls and piling clothing here and there. In return, they are on call to do Charney’s erratic bidding. As Michael leaves, Charney explains to me, “I used to have girls around, but it’s easier with boys.”

Charney is off the bed now, pacing, his lean frame hunched forward like a cartoon of someone walking fast. “Some people call me the masturbator,” Charney says. “Okay. But I’m the industrialist!” At his feet, Hedkayce, one of his mongrel Chihuahuas, starts yapping. “And he,” says Charney, gesturing toward the television, “doesn’t know what it is.”

Charney is an old-fashioned captain of industry, a manufacturing tycoon who came up with a concept (sexy T-shirt), made it, advertised it, sold it, and watched over it all like a madman. He is obsessive about the product, throwing tantrums about stock allocation and necklines with equal petulance. Along the way to taking his company public, Charney acquired an accounting history that at times seems more street corner than Wall Street. And he is widely characterized as a pervert, a libertine who has made his company’s image hypersexual and, some employees have alleged, his workplace too. (View an interactive map of the world showing where T-shirts are made.)

But lately, all that has faded into the background. In December 2007, just as his third sexual-harassment suit was headed to court, Charney took a wild and potentially hazardous stand by placing ads in such publications as the New York Times to state his progressive position on the subject of immigration. One ad, featuring a photograph of an earnest young Hispanic factory worker, read, “It’s time to give a voice to the voiceless. Businesses are afraid to speak to the media about immigration, frightened of reprisals by government agencies. But we cannot just sit in the shadows and watch the government and politicians exploit and misrepresent this matter to advance their own careers.”

Charney’s newspaper spots all but said that American Apparel, like many other U.S. employers, makes use of illegal-immigrant labor. The ads directly criticized the Bush administration and asked the public if maybe it was time to be open and honest about the subject.

Perhaps not.

Last December, Charney was served with a notice of inspection by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the largest investigative branch of the Department of Homeland Security, informing him that he needed to prepare documentation on all of his workers for review. Charney and his growing team of lawyers and consultants have taken this as a warning. The company has given the feds records for thousands of workers; Charney says he hasn’t heard a word in response. Since then, he’s spent his days bracing for a raid at any time on American Apparel’s factories.

American Apparel is the largest clothing manufacturer in the United States, and in downtown Los Angeles Charney employs about 4,000 sewers, cutters, dyers, and other workers, most of whom were not born in the U.S. Although they have all provided documentation, he is still concerned about the legality of the majority of them. Now he is desperately trying to bulk up his workforce in order to keep his operations running smoothly. This year, he has hired an additional 2,000 workers, many of whom found out about the jobs from fliers that Charney himself handed to them on downtown L.A. sidewalks.

“I’ve spent every moment of my existence from the minute I wake up—I have a stomachache, and I get up, and this is what I do,” says Charney. “I do this every day. I do it on Sunday. I don’t even remember when it’s Friday. One day it’s Saturday, and one day it’s Monday. I just keep going and going and going.”


Maybe someday Dov Charney will be known as a tireless crusader for immigrant workers’ rights, but until then his current wicked reputation will probably remain in place. Mention him and people make a sound of distaste and then ask if he is really an exhibitionist-pornographer-compulsive masturbator. This mantle is one that Charney both encourages and abhors but is hard-pressed to shrug off. The public has reacted strongly to the images of out-of-control carnality beamed down from American Apparel’s billboards and splayed across its ads, often photographed by Charney himself, that show young bodies in various states of undress, sporting his company’s clothing.

This sexual aura has cut both ways for American Apparel. Charney has made his name in part through controversy. He once famously masturbated in front of a female journalist. Charney says the reporter, for the now-defunct Jane, took the masturbation out of context. “I was a younger man,” he says, wearily. “The lines were blurred between paramour and reporter.” The reporter has said that her tape recorder or notebook was in full view at all times and that the relationship was professional.

Since the resulting 2004 article was published, four female employees of American Apparel have filed three lawsuits against Charney. One suit was settled; another was dropped; and the third, by former sales representative Mary Nelson, 36, alleges that Charney wore a skimpy thong that barely covered his genitals. During Nelson’s initial job interview, which was held at Charney’s home, she says he referred to female employees as “sluts.” Nelson’s attorney, Keith Fink, told the Los Angeles Times that she was wrongfully terminated after she consulted with a lawyer. The suit was sent into binding arbitration at the beginning of the year; a settlement has not yet been reached.

Charney insists that Nelson, who worked for American Apparel for a little more than a year, was a bad employee who swore compulsively and hustled him, often referring to him as “donkey cock.” In court papers, Charney’s lawyers portray Nelson as a sales rep who performed below expectations. Charney says she was the mastermind of the suits, and he even drew a diagram for me of how three of the four women went to the factory roof to conspire to file them. He can talk for hours about what he calls their scheme and their betrayal.

Still, Charney hasn’t denied the majority of the allegations. His own lawyers have stated in court documents that “American Apparel is a sexually charged workplace where employees of both genders deal with sexual conduct, speech, and images as part of their jobs.” Charney has said that his behavior is the norm in the fashion industry and shouldn’t be considered harassment. He has defended himself by saying he is in the business of making underwear. He points out that in addition to being the company’s creative director, he is also one of its fit models—a simple explanation for why he would stride around his offices half-dressed. He has said that the real reason he had the underwear on was to show his employees and ask them how it looked. He has also said he “test-drives” the underwear to see how it fits “in action.”

He concedes that there was one point when he ran through the factory wearing his underwear, but says it was to entertain staff and film a spoof video. In a deposition, he said he “frequently” had been in his “underpants” because he was “designing an underwear line” while Nelson was working at the company. He says, “I’m very proud of my underwear.”

The sexual harassment suits torment Charney, if for no other reason than because they divert attention away from what he sees as his utopian American factory.

At the end of the 19th century, the U.S. finally got around to establishing its first immigration laws. Since then, much of the debate about who should and shouldn’t be allowed in has centered on California, where the gold rush and the construction of railroads drew a large influx of laborers from China and Mexico. Though the U.S. has dabbled in deportation methods in order to control a growing population of illegal immigrants, federal authorities have mainly turned a blind eye. But in recent years, illegal immigrants have become a potent political symbol. The blind eye seemed to open abruptly last summer, when Michael Chertoff, secretary of homeland security, announced that federal authorities would crack down—not on workers but on employers.

Federal immigration raids on companies around the nation have increased, with 3,900 administrative arrests made since October 2007 and more than 1,000 criminal charges filed. States, too, have joined in the effort, with more than 175 bills introduced into legislatures throughout the country this year. In May, 389 employees were arrested in a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, and 230 sentenced to jail terms. (See “A Beef With the Rabbis”). In another instance, in late August, 350 workers were arrested at an electronics-manufacturing firm in Laurel, Mississippi.

Some estimates put the illegal-immigrant population of the U.S. at nearly 12 million. Most illegals perform at least a portion of their work either under the table or with the help of false documentation. If there’s a ground zero for this issue, it’s Los Angeles. By some economists’ estimates, 1 million of the city’s 10 million inhabitants are there illegally.

So in January, employers in Los Angeles gasped when federal authorities raided Micro Solutions Enterprises, a sleepy, long-established printer-­cartridge manufacturer based in East L.A. that employed 800 workers. Federal officials said that 138 employees were undocumented, but owner Avi Wazana told his customers that the company had been verifying the legal status of all new hires through federal programs for almost a year.

“It’s very nudge-nudge-wink,” says Jack Kyser, the chief economist of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. “What you have is a large immigrant workforce. And if you are an undocumented immigrant, all you need is to get the documents necessary to get a job. They go in, and the employers look at it, but employers have to be careful.” That’s because state laws prohibit companies from asking prospective workers for more than two forms of identification, and they risk civil suits if they do.

This situation spurred California businesses to begin quietly lobbying public officials to push for change. In March, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wrote a letter to Chertoff criticizing I.C.E. agents for raids on “established, responsible employers” in the city; he asked the secretary to focus on those with a record of labor violations. Meanwhile, in April, Gavin Newsom, San Francisco’s mayor, said he would not cooperate with the federal crackdown.

In a recent interview, Chertoff defended his hard-line approach, saying, “We are not going to be able to satisfy the American people on a legal temporary-worker program until they are convinced that we will have a stick as well as a carrot.”

For most of the apparel business, illegal immigration is no longer an issue, since 97 percent of the clothing purchased in the U.S. is manufactured in foreign countries. In the world of T-shirts, all Charney’s major competitors—Hanes, Gap, and Fruit of the Loom—make their goods abroad.

Charney is in his office at 8:30 at night, typing on his computer. On the seventh floor of the 800,000-square-foot factory that houses most of American Apparel’s design, manufacturing, shipping, retailing, and customer-service departments, Charney’s spacious corner office functions as the control tower from which he wields his power in his own peculiar, Willy Wonka-ish way. He constantly calls out to anyone who passes by in the hallway, regardless of whether they are on their way to the bathroom or, worse, on their way home. “Hey, hey! What’s going on?” he shouts, always with a question. “What are we running out of? What’s selling? Did you get me those mannequins I asked for? Where are we at with that neckline?”

Charney’s desk faces a line of cheap black-leather chairs that could have been lifted from a nail salon. Behind him is a honeycomb arrangement of shelves where he has tucked items of importance—from vintage advertisements showing bare-breasted Polynesian women to a letter he wrote at age 11 asking for a refund for his not-quite-right bag of potato chips. There is also a handwritten list of what he believes fashion is made of: fantasy, function, status, anxiety. The shelves are lined with books with such titles as A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Population Studies, and Understanding Judaism.

His assistant Marina, a stocky woman with the patience of a saint, comes in and places two Hungry Man frozen dinners in front of him. “Chicken or turkey?” she asks. He ignores her. She looks up at me and rolls her eyes, like a bemused babysitter. Eventually, Charney stops his intense, jab-jab touch-typing (he’s severely dyslexic); grunts; points to the turkey; and then raises his head and flashes Marina a beaming smile. She wanders off, and he turns his attention back to his keyboard.

Charney’s project today and for the past few weeks has been to bulk up the immigration section of the American Apparel website called Legalize L.A., which is an extensive collection of news clips, pro-immigrant fact sheets, videos, an excerpt from John F. Kennedy’s 1958 book, A Nation of Immigrants, and other material advocating the legalization of L.A.’s workforce.

Charney has long been obsessed with immigration. He still has a copy of a school paper he wrote entitled “The Immigrant.” When I ask why he seems fixated on the subject, he shouts, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall! It’s because I’m a Jew! Birds are free! We want to go somewhere, let’s go! I just don’t believe in borders, in the end. The Americans who do just don’t trust humanity.”

A young, loud, pear-shaped man named Johnny Makeup wanders in wearing a Mickey Mouse sweater, purple jeans, and shiny loafers. Johnny says Charney recruited him from an American Apparel store in New York after being charmed by his sense of style. Now he’s apprenticing in the P.R. department, where his tasks include putting together music mixes, updating his MySpace page, making Charney salads, and keeping him company. He lives in Charney’s mansion and calls him Daddy.

“Daddy,” he says, as he plops onto the leather couch next to the desk, “I saw a vagina for the third time today.” Charney ignores him and continues to stare at his computer screen, scrolling through immigration fact sheets that he can use to bolster his arguments.

“Daddy, I know you don’t like doing anything fun right now, but my friends are going to Coachella,” Johnny continues happily. Charney picks up the phone and punches in a number.

“Mom,” Charney barks. “I need that picture, that picture from the march. No, I want it for the site. I’m putting it up on the site.” He wants a picture his mother has of them at a pro-choice demonstration march together 30 years ago. Then he asks her if she’s seen the photos of Zaida (the Yiddish word for grandfather); Charney’s grandfather is memorialized in countless photographs pinned to the office walls and on the American Apparel website. Charney is worried that people have the wrong idea about the company, so he wants to humanize it. If people know he’s human, he thinks, maybe they won’t be so hard on him.

He hangs up and turns to me with a funny look in his eyes. “What size waist are you?” he asks, rummaging in the corner and pulling out a teensy pair of periwinkle jeans.

“No way,” I say.

“Come on,” he wheedles. “These aren’t even in stores. I’ll leave the room if you want.” When I say no, he huffs in frustration.

If the feds do raid American Apparel, they will walk into a factory of 4,000 or more employees who are living in a sort of phantasmagoric Charney dream of blue-collar America: largely immigrant, Hispanic, hardworking, and at an average of $12 an hour, probably better paid than any other workers on the planet sewing T-shirts. Most clothing manufacturers have decamped to foreign shores over the past two decades, but here in downtown L.A., American Apparel offers health insurance, an in-house health clinic, subsidized meals, English-language classes, and a host of other cushy incentives. It is, in some sense, a utopian enterprise.

But it is also one that, some complain, exists only at Charney’s command. In 2003, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees attempted to organize factory workers at American Apparel. Its efforts failed. Charney says that it was his employees who didn’t want the union. But union organizers said Charney directed his managers to intimidate and threaten the workers. Five years later, union leaders in L.A. have arrived at a kind of cease-fire with Charney, but they remain critical.

“We think all employers have that obligation to take care of their workers, so we can’t say it is an exemplary employer,” says Kimi Lee, director of the Garment Workers Center, a nonprofit organization that deals with labor issues. “It isn’t a shining star, but it’s not a sweatshop. It could be better. Even though Charney talks about workers’ rights and trumpets all the things he’s done, he’s not letting the workers speak for themselves. It’s significant that he doesn’t. It’s very paternalistic. He believes he’s treating them better than anyone else could.”

When Charney finishes work, at 11 p.m., he nods at Johnny, who scampers after him, lugging an old tote bag. Charney walks down the hall, charges through a set of industrial doors, and plows across the cafeteria. Johnny vamps behind him, gesturing at Charney’s ass, and the night-shift workers sitting at the tables on break let loose with catcalls and whistles. Charney gives them a distracted smile and keeps going.

As a child, Charney showed signs of possibly having a future as a tycoon. When he was 11, he started a newspaper in his Montreal neighborhood. He contracted with an area printer to produce his weekly journal, which had about 50 subscribers and sold for 25 cents a copy. His mother, recalling the night when she almost lost her mind with fear because her son was missing, remembers him returning home in a cab at 2 a.m. with the latest edition of his newspaper under his arm.

“Dov has been driven since he was born,” Sylvia Charney says. “I never pushed him. In fact, I tried to pull him back. He’s always had that energy. He pushed, pushed, pushed until he got what he wanted.”

Charney came of age in the 1980s, an era that, since it coincided with a major shift in U.S. apparel manufacturing, laid the groundwork for his company. The major T-shirt makers left for cheaper pastures in China, India, and Pakistan. In love as much with the old-school model of in-house manufacturing as with clothing design, Charney is fervent about everything from his desire to maintain control of the total operation to the cut and feel of a polo shirt.

There are three main strands in the story of American Apparel: Charney’s obsession with free trade, his love affair with American T-shirts, and his fixation on sex. His love of T-shirts began early, with visits to his grandparents in Palm Beach, Florida, where he bought Lacoste, Gant, and Hanes shirts and proudly returned to Canada sporting the preppy look. In 1988, while a high school senior, Charney started American Apparel. “I was this little Jewish rat,” he recalls happily. He got his logo by tracing the eagle on a dollar bill and came up with the slogan “Canada’s direct source for American-made T-shirts and fleecewear.”

“I got so obsessed with it,” he says. “If you want to take the long view, I’m the only fucker still making this stuff. I was a Canadian in love with this iconic idea. It was like M&M’s if you’re from Moscow.”

At 19, he moved to Columbia, South Carolina, and insinuated himself into a world of aging manufacturers, from whom he learned elaborate formulas for how to produce apparel and make pennies on the dollar. He imitated the soft, basic simplicity of the Hanes T-shirts he’d grown up with and, trying to compete with the giants, sold shirts in bulk to printers and stores.

But for all of Charney’s passion, he was disorganized, and by 1996 he was having trouble paying his bills. That year, he filed for Chapter 11 and fled to California. He says he’s been ashamed ever since and has avoided talking about it. “It’s a disgrace!” he screams, when I ask. He arrived in Los Angeles and went to work in a sewing room downtown. He then met an apparel manufacturer named Sang Ho Lim; after the two had dinner at a restaurant where the sushi is delivered to customers on a conveyor belt, the two became partners.

With Lim’s backing, Charney retooled American Apparel in 1998, merging his existing operation with Lim’s cutting and sewing business. As the brand gained currency with antilabel young consumers—the clothing is famous for having no visible logo—the business began to grow. In 2003, he had three stores; in 2005, he opened 65 more.

But that year, the company’s then-C.F.O. Mark Schlein died of heart failure. Rather than hire a replacement immediately, American Apparel relied on an outside accounting firm to help oversee its finances. Meanwhile, Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank, which had given the company an early loan, grew uneasy with the rapid pace at which it was opening new stores and asked Charney to secure additional financing. By the end of 2005 he still hadn’t found a new investor, so U.S. Bank declared American Apparel in default of its covenant agreement. Then, says Charney, an internal audit discovered that the company’s earnings had been “accidentally” inflated by 30 percent for the year; rather than $26 million, it had earned only about $18 million.

In 2006, Charney hired Adrian Ko­walewski, a newly minted University of Chicago business school graduate, to advise the firm on financing. The two met that spring when Kowalewski was writing a research paper on American Apparel. Shortly after, Charney was approached by Endeavor Acquisition, a recently formed special-purpose acquisition company. (Robert Kennedy’s daughter Kerry Kennedy is a board member.) Endeavor wanted to take a share of American Apparel; Charney would keep a 55 percent controlling stake, and American Apparel would receive more than $125 million. Endeavor would then take the company public, as long as Charney agreed to step down as C.E.O. and take the title of creative director.

Charney refused to step down but agreed to hire a real C.F.O. Kowalewski advised him not to take the deal, but Endeavor agreed to Charney’s terms, and it went forward anyway. On December 12, 2007, American Apparel began trading on the American Stock Exchange. Charney’s stock was worth more than $580 million. The deal also resulted in $67.9 million in cash for Lim, the company’s other principal shareholder. Hundreds of employees received cash bonuses totaling $2.5 million.

Still, Charney, ruminating on his negative image in the public eye, calls me late one night and spends an hour complaining about an article in the Wall Street Journal that details the company’s spotty financial history. “I just have to close my eyes and lie in bed with the windows open and let the wind blow over me and imagine I’m being covered in sand,” he says, sounding exhausted.

It’s four months after the notice from I.C.E., and the anticipated raid has yet to come. But Charney is convinced it will happen soon. On a blazing hot afternoon, he sets off on an employee-finding mission in his sparkling gray Land Rover. He pulls into a garbage-strewn parking lot in the old bank district in downtown Los Angeles. The ornate Beaux-Arts buildings in copper, stone, and wood that once housed the infrastructure of an early-19th-century city have been completely gutted and remade into sweatshops.

Charney hops out of the S.U.V. with a thick fistful of fliers advertising positions at American Apparel—sewing, dyeing, cutting, cleaning, security. He marches along the sidewalk, shoving papers at passersby with the zeal of a political propagandist. “Here you go,” he says, as he hands fliers to a homeless woman, a shop owner, a man eating a sandwich, and a woman walking down the street with a baby. We walk past two homeless men who reek of alcohol. “You don’t get a flier if you’re drunk,” he whispers to me.

“What about us?” one of the men yells. Charney stops and hands them a flier.

“You gave us this last week,” one of them grumbles.

Charney passes out the rest of his fliers and drives 10 blocks back to the American Apparel factory, where the unpaved and cratered parking lot is jammed with cars. Dozens of middle-aged women—Filipina, Chinese, South American, Mexican—are lined up at the gate waiting for the elevator. Job interviews are being conducted inside. A pair of twin blond surfer guys wander by in flip-flops. A tall redhead in purple jeans hurries past with a frantic look in his eyes and a measuring tape around his shoulders. One young woman is in hot-pink tiger-print pants; others wear miniskirts and tights and carry vintage Chanel purses. On a bench waiting with her mother is a little girl squeezed into a tennis skirt, eating a hot dog.

Inside the factory, on the high, white walls, hang large photographs of young women, their sweatshirts and T-shirts falling off. Employees—Charney’s soldiers—wear candy-colored T-shirts with the names of their departments (manufacturing, security, shipping) printed in both Spanish and English. Spend an hour in American Apparel’s factories, and you see two categories of employee: hipster and immigrant. There is some crossover, of course; Charney is quick to point out that he himself is an immigrant. But most of those who work on the factory floor are modestly dressed, tidily groomed, and Hispanic. The men wear loose jeans, T-shirts, or button-down shirts; the women wear embroidered tops and carry simple handbags.

On the second floor, a photo shoot is under way. A man in a turquoise nylon jacket and skintight jeans photographs a young woman in leggings. Standing nearby is Iris Alonzo, one of the company’s creative directors and a close Charney ally. “We’re living in a world of bullshit,” she complains. “They’re targeting us. Dov is a character, and it’s easy to make him a target. Older people, like government types, like to think of him as a pervert. But we put $100 million a year into the L.A. payroll. We’re a micro version of a macro problem,” she says.

In March and April, American Apparel interviewed between 3,000 and 4,000 people for factory jobs. They found fewer than 10 percent with impeccable documentation. “We’re not the bad guys. The I.C.E. guys are like rednecks,” says Alonzo. “Every time I drive in here I get teary. People are stoked to be here. It’s like a little team. It’s just really sad that—you know, we’re not evil. We had to let a small group of people go and give them severance.”

In the spring, Charney had to fire 30 employees—many of whom had worked at the company for a decade or more—when he discovered that they had improper paperwork. Each one had $30,000 worth of company stock to cash in, a kind of severance unheard of in the world of apparel-factory workers. When I ask Charney about it, his eyes seem to tear, and for once, he ignores me.

It’s noon on May Day, a pleasant 72 degrees, and in downtown Los Angeles the sun burns through the smog and onto cordoned-off streets. Long lines of police and firefighters coordinate crowd-control routines. In this city, May 1 has become the day to protest the treatment of immigrant workers. In 2007, during the annual march, police clubbed and teargassed protesters.

The American Apparel factory has closed early for the day so employees can take part. Charney pulls up to the factory in his Land Rover, parks, and stomps up the ramp with his mother trailing behind.

Today is supposed to be about the march, but the accounting staff is immediately in Charney’s face. It must file the company’s 10-K report by midnight. A series of whispered conversations takes place. He’s furious about something.
“You won’t understand what’s about to happen,” he tells me.

Nearly running, Charney barrels through the parking lot to the warehouse. The freight elevator is slow, so he runs up seven steep flights of stairs, his group of workers behind him, panting.

He silently plows through long rows of cardboard cartons, his chin thrust forward, moving spastically, jabbing at boxes. On this floor are products that have been identified defective. Charney says his company’s profits have been hurt by too much inventory designated “off quality.” He is convinced that lazy employees—those he’s summoned—are to blame.

“You’re robbing the company of profits!” he screams. “All these pink boxes need to be opened and accounted for.” The production manager sits on a box and starts to cry silently.

He seems angriest because he’s the one losing money. “You have to be a greedy monster in this world,” he says.

“Like a pig! Like a monster! That insatiable appetite is what drives business. I have the smell for it. I’m a pig! I’m an animal.”

Seven floors below,Bare in the parking lot, thousands of American Apparel workers holding protest signs are waiting for their leader. Charney and his aides have been gearing up for the march for weeks. Throughout the city, they’ve been giving away free legalize l.a. T-shirts in all their stores.

Charney joins his workers, but there’s still a delay: He’s waiting for a state senator who has promised to march with them. When the politician finally appears, Charney charges down the street, and within minutes his assistants are shouting that he has left the rest of the workers in the dust. He’s marching next to his mother, whom he ignores. But then she disappears, and he starts looking around, and then everyone is searching. In a soft voice, Charney says, “Where’s my mom?” and then his fabric guy, who is wearing an earpiece, announces that she’s been located.

Johnny Makeup shows up too, carrying a huge cutout of Paris Hilton, on which he has arranged a LEGALIZE L.A. dress.

“Immigrants are hot!” shouts Johnny. “Come party with the immigrants.” Johnny makes his way over to Sylvia, calling her Grandma. She doesn’t seem to like it.

Charney has said he wants American Apparel to be to L.A. what Levi Strauss was to San Francisco during the civil-rights era, when the jeansmaker desegregated its factories long before the federal government mandated it. But today, Charney seems conflicted about how much he will speak out. The march ends downtown, in front of the Los Angeles Times Building. A stage has been set up, where mariachi bands perform and local politicians take turns speaking out against I.C.E., Bush, and anti-immigrant sentiment. Charney has been looking forward to the march for weeks, but now, as politicians and activists are begging him to take the stage, he’s silently pacing. His mother urges him to go up there and speak.

But Charney says that politics doesn’t sell. Sex sells. And in the end, he wants to sell. I ask Charney about how all the pieces fit together—the sexual-harassment charges, the lewd advertising, and what he says matters most now, his political agenda of immigration reform.

“Fashion is about sexuality,” he’s shouting. “It’s hard to be fashionable and sanitize it and take the sexuality out of it. It’s tasteful. It’s utility—it’s not Frederick’s of Hollywood. It has to make you feel attractive. Sex makes you feel beautiful or handsome. And doesn’t it make you feel good that it’s made in conditions that are not deplorable? The whole sweatshop-free thing, it’s too complicated. It’s too sophisticated. So we were like, ‘Fuck it. Let’s not talk about it. People can’t get it.’ It’s a victory that we’re able to make clothing that people love in a place that isn’t embarrassing. Get over the ads. Get over the complaints. Get over the fact that I made a mistake making a comment to one or two girls. How selfish! Why couldn’t they just walk away? Think of the thousands of suppliers, the thousands of sewers, the workers!”

He continues, “Of course our clothing is intimate.” Then he switches briefly to his Québécois French. “Les intimes. It’s leisure. It’s intimacy. It’s a cold night, and you cuddle up with a blanket in your panties. You ever put on a pair of pants that made you look good, Claire?” he asks.

“Yes,” I tell him. “The pair I’m wearing right now.”

“See!” he shouts victoriously. “That’s what a beautiful, intelligent woman wants, to go to dinner in a pair of pants that makes her look good. She’s on top of the fucking world. That’s what it’s all about. The pants! The pants! That’s all a beautiful woman wants! A pair of pants that takes her into a restaurant. She looks beautiful. She looks intelligent! She’s got a pair of pants! She’s on top of the world—and it’s the pants, the pants!”

Labels: Art, Stuff