Depending on how little or how much attention you’ve been paying, the other day  I wrote about how I’d been shopping in American Apparel.  I was immediately contacted by Shawn Shahani who works there, asking me if I’d like to see the factory while I was in town. And at incredibly short notice, he managed to hire a bunch of first class Hispanic and Chinese actors to play the parts of factory workers and hide the usual child workers in the basement.  Only kidding.  No, he gave me a guided tour of the huge building down in the fashion district, which was fascinating.  

In London there’s a store around the corner from me in Portobello Road, which I pop in to from time to time so obviously I’m aware of the soft cottons, great cuts and the striking images of the brand.  But the full meaning of the brand was something that escaped me - Legalize LA for example, the campaign started by the Canadian founder Dov Charney encourages businesses in LA to treat legal migrants fairly in the workplace and also to help the over 1 million undocumented workers who live in the city to become legal residents.  The workers at AA make between $8 and $10 an hour, (well above the minimum wage in the US). Each shift they do is broken down into hourly sections and if they achieve certain targets within each hour they can earn bonuses.  They get their bus passes paid for,  (yes, apparently LA has a public transportation system) , and there is a doctor’s surgery with nurses, a subsidised canteen, and even a team of masseuses who work the floors.  Being anti-immigration is a fairly recent phenomenon in America, as I understand it.  After all, this is the nation that was built on the hard work of migrants, that accepted people regardless of race, colour, creed. American Apparel shows that treating workers fairly can be a successful business model - there are huge practical advantages in not having to outsource production to China, such as being able to initiate new designs and ideas quickly using the in-house design team. 

One thing that surprised me - the advertising images, which I had always thought were shot by photographer Terry Richardson, are for the most part taken by Charney himself.  I guess they appeal to my inner-slut, but they have been criticised in the US for being overtly sexual.  Now there’s a novelty, a business using sex to sell something…