In terms of PR, you couldn’t fare much worse than American Apparel has for the past six months or so. Back in May, I posted on
AA’s obnoxiously sizist attitude
, which became a blog topic after plus-size model April Flores was rudely dismissed by an American Apparel employee who snapped at her, “Plus-size is not our demographic.” Since then,
Gawker has run a series of posts about the company’s hiring standards
, which run the gamut from irritating to downright racist. (Girls are prohibited from wearing liquid foundation or shiny lip gloss, and only “classy black girls, with nice hair” should bother applying.) This is all on top of a never-ending string of sexual harassment suits against Dov Charney, the company’s
CEO who’s admitted to regularly calling females “sluts” and “cunts” at the office
.
The woes continue:
The New York Times
today reports that AA is dangerously close to breaching a loan covenant, which would diminish company shares by 22 percent, bringing them to an all-time low. According
to the report
, “the company now sees losses from operations continuing through at least the third quarter, and said it may not have sufficient liquidity to continue to operate through next year.”At this point, it looks like AA will be hard-pressed to survive just a few months. Now that the gold lamé legging need has been born, perhaps a new retailer, sans predatory CEO, will rise to the challenge.
