Like flipping through holiday photos from 1989, looking back at American Apparel ads as the company closes is filling me with a kind of jolly disbelief. That was what we wore? That was what people thought was fashionable?
Leggings, leggings, leggings as far as the eye could see. Black leggings, denim leggings, leggings that were made from some space fabric that looked like moonlight until they went in a coloured wash and then took on more of a wet-yourself effect. Leggings that were so comfortable you wore them as pyjamas, then to the gym and then to work, causing managers to borrow you for a moment to ask if everything was OK at home.
Shop assistants looked like Sheena Easton after a storm, furious and cold. They sold crop tops that revealed beaches of cold, tanned flesh, and mini skirts made of a single panty liner. Skin was portioned off in creative ways: a side-boob here, a clavicle there, a very deep V-neck reminiscent of autopsies. Hotpants, mesh vests, even on a rainy Tuesday they pushed the amateur choreographer look hard.
You could even buy lens-less glasses which, when worn with a gold leotard, gave the appearance of a confident person debating the politics of raunch culture. Each clothes rail suggested a different career costume: teaching assistant with a dark past, for instance, or junkie wedding planner, or ex-Christian selling her virginity online, or drummer from a regional punk band, or barista who went to Brooklyn once, or victim of a phishing scam, or dad who’s given up. A homemade bong, a pair of cycling shorts, Dorito powder for bronzer. Shop the look!
They reintroduced the “body” to the high street, answering the question: “Where can I find a tight top that also engages with my vaginal ecology?” There were hoodies in every colour you could imagine, except adult. There were Lycra dresses that made people look like very old shadows, and “disco pants” that would never dance. There were jeans that turned arses into horror films, and lace bodystockings that could only be read as a threat.
But it was a different time. When glamour was a woman collapsed topless in her boss’s flat, wearing a frozen stare and children’s knickers. When it was totally fine for a fashion brand to run a “back to school” campaign featuring up-skirt shots of a model leaning through a car window in a tartan kilt. So innocent!
Irony was stamped on every fashion decision in Comic Sans, so all the photos of women’s crotches weren’t “porny” or exploitative, God no. They were fun!
American Apparel built their stores and stories on the appeal of being a little bit controversial, a little bit offensive. In one of Dov Charney’s early interviews, he repeatedly masturbated in front of the journalist. He soon came to be known as a sort of dick-out Karl Lagerfeld. It’s easy to see how so many were seduced by his funny brand for so long; there was a lot going on. There was the white light of Terry Richardson’s minimal photography, which suggested realness and urbanity, somehow allowing for the alleged shittery behind the camera. There was that attitude in the air, that it was liberating for a woman to make a sex object of herself. There were scrunchies.
They marketed hipness, in the process making it mainstream, so there’s nothing left to sell. And while I hate to gloat (I’m not a gloater, gloating is vulgar) looking back on the ads and the stories of sexual harassment rife in the company, it’s reassuring to see that, along with labour practices and bad accounting, their treatment of women was a big part of their downfall. I remember when their “grooming standards” were published with the memo to staff that they shouldn’t pluck their eyebrows or wear make-up. Which, even in those gentle days, struck me as wildly creepy. Because when you looked at their ads and saw the image of girlhood they traded on, it was instantly obvious this wasn’t American Apparel wanting staff to feel confident “bare-faced”, it was about emphasising their girlishness, their tired vulnerability.
Looking back at American Apparel, the photos like relics from a fancy dress party (theme: anxiety), I’m boggling at what we once accepted as… cool.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman
