Fuck you, American Apparel.

American Apparel was founded in 1989 as a wholesale tshirt supplier. They opened their first retail store in 2003, and started selling to the public. It was instantly a huge success. Melanie Rickey, fashion editor of Grazia magazine, said “”It became very big, very quickly. Everybody was wearing it, and I mean everyone: high-fashion kids, clubbers, geeks and gay kids across the world. It crossed all genres and tribes.”

Marketed as the ethical alternative to sweatshop manufactured clothing, American Apparel pride themselves on the fact that all of their product is made in the USA . Nearly all of the company’s manufacturing, distribution and retail is done in LA, by employees – the majority of whom are immigrants – who are paid more than twice the minimum wage, offered low-cost, full-family healthcare, and allowed free international phone calls during work hours.

So far, so awesome. And American Apparel’s success reflected this – in 2008, shares of the company reached $14 (£9) and they were named Label of the Year by everyone’s favourite “ethical” newspaper.  In 2009, their CEO and founder, Dov Charney, was a finalist for Time’s 100 most influential people in the world. They expanded by nearly 150 stores in their first three years, and nearly twice that in the next three.

Last week though, American Apparel shares were trading at an all-time low of 75 cents, and the company had to admit that it now has debts of $120m and is losing money at a rate of nearly $30m a year.

With sales down by 16% in its 279 shops globally the company whose clothes were worn by the coolest kids across the world is now at risk of breaching the terms of an $80m loan it received in March 2009 – a loan advanced to rescue it from another financial crisis.

American Apparel is in crisis, facing bankruptcy and closure – and SSY will be celebrating its downfall. Here’s why…

Founder and CEO Dov Charney is a pervert and abuser. He has been subject to FIVE sexual harrassment lawsuits. He regularly conducts meetings with employees wearing nothing but a thong or a cocksock. He had oral sex with a female employee and masturbated several times in front of a female journalist he was supposed to be giving an interview to. Most of the resulting interview consisted of him referring to various women as ‘sluts’ and ‘cunts’, denying that these are derogatory terms, and insisting that “women initiate most domestic violence”.

One industry insider calls Charney an “odious character about whom I have heard nothing but bad things, particularly concerning his recruitment techniques and the way he treats female employees”. There is, he adds, a “certain over-reliance on oral sex during interviews over assessing their retail experience”.

American Apparel adverts do not feature models who are paid for their work. They feature young employees from the shopfloor who are whisked away from their normal duties to pose for provocative photos, and then sent back to work. And their adverts seem to feature very little actual clothes, instead focusing on exoticised teen girls in sexually compromising positions. Not to mention this infamous ad…

Instead of hiring models to fit their clothes on, Charney just heads to the local strip club: “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.”

American Apparel fans praise them for their commitment to workers’ rights – who cares about women workers, right? It’s not like the employees in clothing manufacture or fashion retail are going to be nearly all female, after all…

Besides which, for all their rhetoric on workers’ rights, American Apparel are vehemently anti-union, and were reported to the National Labor Relations Board for their attempts to sabotage and interfere with union organisers.

So much for workers’ rights… American Apparel is nothing but a disgusting sham who exploit and oppress those they claim to care about, all the while trying to sell our protest back to us.