American Apparel
sits in the
midst of the retail wonderland
from 14th to 23rd
streets
along Fifth Avenue,
a gigundous sidewalk mall in
Manhattan.
Smashed
next to each other, the retail chains (Emporio Armani to Skechers)
offer wild contrasts that make each seem like a stand-alone. American
Apparel is a mecca of white and glass, stuffed with racks of cotton
things in a rainbow of colors, and staffed with very good-looking,
shapely girls and boys bouncing around. It feels like a music video
waiting to start.

To be in your mid-forties and walk in there
is to be unable to deny your age. I follow my willowy, chattering
19-year-old cousin (she's on another college break) through the racks.
She calls the store Americal Apparent and swings out her finds: T-shirts in turquoise, orange, yellow.

Is it lame to wear a dress on top of a dress? she wonders.

Those are dresses? The clothes are coded, as if only the Young could really know how to wear them.

At the store entrance, there's fresh air and cozy hoodies in burgundy and blue polka-dot, which my cousin decides we need to buy so we can twin. Why should I buy this? I ask her. I know I'll get way more than "it looks good." She never disappoints.

"Because
AA like it is totally American and it's totally popular," my cousin
starts, in her declaratory, subjective, partially-based-on-hearsay way.
"I mean it's like totally cute T-shirts, and leggings,
and underwear, and you can completely just dress in that, and they
totally get that certain things are unisex and that makes it sexy. And
that we have sex. And they make it all in Los Angeles, and they only have their own stores so they can keep the prices down, and they've got organic,
but it's only like $10 and not $60 for a tank top." She inhales. She
pulls out the hoodie and holds it against me, then frowns.

"But," she says. "You know the other side of being totally American. The boss [she means CEO Dov Charney] is a mogul freak. He's like a visionary billionaire who looks good because he has one cause that happens to be, like, liberal."

She
pulls out the black-and-white polka-dotted version of the hoodie. She
shakes her head. "And I think he's a total perv, arch-conservative in
other ways. Like how Ted Turner was a total conservationist sexist asshole?"

Giant eyebrow arch from cousin Jana. Nor will I verify her categorization of Ted Turner.

"He's totally rocking in terms of immigration stuff, like that ad," she explains, back on Charney. "Did you see the ad?"

I did. It ran in December in The New York Times.
The ad tagline reads: "AMERICAN APPAREL ON IMMIGRATION." It puts a face
on the usual nameless illegal aliens (the ones in the photo are
documented) that make our clothes. And calls for Bush to get off his
duff and do the right thing on immigration reform. And uses loaded
words like apartheid.

"So that's right on," my cousin
says. "But he's a perv. He exposed himself to workers. He supposedly
prefers Asian girls and maybe Latinas, too. So then you have to wonder
why he wants to help Latinos. Like, 'Help those exotic people so I can
go paw their daughters."

I tell her I read that he was accused of sexual harassment, but it was never proven. Just to be fair. We skip over the implications of patriarchal racism. But there is a lurid, pubie feel to the ad campaigns and photography (more than a bit like amateur teen porn). So he may be a bit twisted. But maybe it depends on who's looking.

"And
a few years ago, when the workers tried to form a union? He totally
went gobstopper on them and forced them to promise to never do it
again. And that really happened," she concludes.

We both look at
the hoodies. I imagine old photos of union busting, of Barbara Koppel
movies, of meatpacking workers, of scabs. My cousin imagines something
a bit more vague. "My generation doesn't always get the union thing,"
she says. "Maybe it's not as important as it used to be."

"I'm not going to touch that," I tell her, but kindly. Let her make up her own mind.

But the bubble's been busted on these cotton confections, hasn't it.

"I guess the truth is that clothing is evil," my cousin declares. "The clothing industrial complex. There should be a movie. Eric Brockovich."

"Erin," I say.