STRIP TEES

A former clothing industry insider dishes on the anti-feminist excesses of a company she once embraced but then later called a cult.

When a stylish young woman offered Flannery a job with American Apparel, a company unfettered “by logos or politically correct tribalism,” she readily accepted. The opportunity seemed the perfect remedy to months of unemployment in her adopted city of Los Angeles and a perfect fit for her next job. The millennial females who sat behind desks in the corporate office or modeled American Apparel clothes in their stores made the company seem like a feminist utopia. Flannery’s first hint that all was not what it seemed came when she learned that the retailer’s free-spirited owner, Dov Charney, dated several of her colleagues and had once masturbated in front of a female journalist. At the time, however, the ambitious Flannery ignored what she saw and heard, choosing instead to seek her “true purpose” with the company. After she recruited a high school junior into the company, Flannery soon found herself flying all over the country to scout girls for different American Apparel branches. Suddenly, the colleagues who had earned their positions by sleeping with Charney became icons of sex-positivity rather than victims of sexism. Giddy with what she believed was her own self-made success, the author indulged in parties, marijuana, and casual sex with subordinates. Even as Charney found himself embroiled in sexual harassment lawsuits, Flannery, driven to maintain the LA life she loved, continued to support him and the ideology of anti-puritanism he used to control the women he used for sex and profit. As the author details her initiation into the realities of corporate misogyny, the author provides a disturbing look at the dangerous ways modern capitalism can debase, deform, and blind the individuals it exploits.

A candid and provocative memoir.