‘Tis now officially the season to consume, and whoever glued shut 200-some locks at that strip mall in Louisiana last weekend is my new hero. But if donating to charity in the names of loved ones this year just doesn’t feel right, the least you can do is fork over your cash to companies that seem to give a hoot what happens to the world when they concoct an internationally successful brand of cosmetics, for instance, or manufacture T-shirts by the millions.
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American Apparel’s ads in hipster mags, where hot, half-dressed waifs strike “does-my-butt-look-fat?” poses to sell T-shirts, make me feel kinda funny. Why does a socially conscious company have to oversexualize its product? But I guess if hot, half-dressed waifs get people to stop supporting sweatshop labor, I can look the other way. American Apparel’s enormous Los Angeles factory employs more than 3,000 people, and the folks who sew the clothes make an average of about $13 an hour. Health insurance is available for $8 a week; dental insurance for about a buck. The company also offers paid vacation, a bicycle-sharing program with free lock and helmet, free massages on site, English classes for non-English speaking workers, and more.
Late one night in June, at a taco stand in Los Angeles, Lauer and Frey ran into Dov Charney, American Apparel head honcho. They’d met one other time, nine months earlier, when Charney came to Chicago to see how their shop and others were showcasing his products. The encounter was “totally random,” Lauer says, but right then and there Charney asked the couple if they wanted to help him open retail stores here.
