American Apparel has become so synonymous with controversy that it is easy to forget why anyone cared about it in the first place. But when the US chain first brought its lurid leggings and spandex crop tops to Britain, it broke new ground on the high street.
In the noughties, American Apparel’s offering was precise and unique. It took the cheap, sporty basics that were included as little more than an afterthought at its competitors and made them sexy and covetable. Its leggings were not just leggings, they were high-shine “disco pants” more suited to dance floors than yoga mats. Its crop tops and cutout leotards were edgy and highly revealing – perfect for its key customers, twentysomething club kids.
And by offering simple pieces in a multitude of fits and colours, it also catered for a slightly more grownup crowd, becoming the place your most fashionable friend bought her best-fitting T-shirt.
Much of the appeal lay in its branding. You knew, as soon as you stepped into an American Apparel shop, that it was cooler than you were: stores were intimidating spaces staffed by beautiful young things and soundtracked by booming music. Its advertising and in-store imagery was designed to unsettle too, presenting a gritty, lo-fi sexuality – all unretouched models of varying body sizes with visible nipples and pubic hair – that had more in common with the aesthetic of internet porn than the glossy imagery of the rest of the high street.
It was this edginess that brought American Apparel down when news of sexual harassment suits against its founder, Dov Charney, made the company seem creepy, rather than arty and subversive. But while American Apparel’s branding feels out of date – a hangover from the days when “hipster misogynists” were more readily accepted by the media – its fashion legacy has been more successful.
So many of the attributes that were once unique to American Apparel – unisex clothes, ethical production, athletics-influenced designs and brilliant basics – remain important trends in fashion today.
But now that everybody else is offering these too, all that differentiates American Apparel is its tarnished reputation.
