Another chapter has this been written in the Dov Charney versus American Apparel saga. On Thursday, The New York Post reported the clothier sent out a memo to its retail managers, instructing them to remove all images or signage—every vestige—of ex-CEO Charney, including those of his family, from the company’s stores.
Charney founded the locally-made, overpriced “shmata business” in 1991, and transformed it into a socially-conscious, vertically integrated retail giant, with manufacturing and distributions based entirely out of its headquarters in L.A. Renowned perhaps for being a helicopter CEO, Charney was involved in most aspects of the manufacturing process; that is, until he was canned by American Apparel’s board of directors on account of alleged misconduct in 2014, after 23 years of leading the firm, and almost as many of sexual harassment allegations and rumors.
This mysterious Charney censorship involving the swift removal of all images of Charney, his kinship (specifically his dad, Morris), and anything suggesting the firm was “operated by Dov Charney,” comes in the wake of several not-too-coincidental legal developments, including two defamation lawsuits, which were dismissed this week.
Even in Charney’s absence, the business side of American Apparel is apparently not doing so well. The company announced last week that it received notice from the New York Stock Exchange that it was on the verge of being de-listed on account of having “sustained losses which are so substantial in relation to its overall operations or its existing financial resources … that it appears questionable, in the opinion of the exchange, as to whether the company will be able to continue operations and/or meet its obligations,” reported the Los Angeles Business Journal. (Shares of American Apparel common stock, over the last year, have fallen about 85 percent.)
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Related: Man of Cloth
Hannah Vaitsblit is an intern at Tablet.
