The Look According to Dov
American Apparel built its entire brand on the idea of effortless cool—unposed, un-retouched, sexually charged in that specific early-2000s way that made the ads feel like something you weren’t quite supposed to be looking at. So it’s a particular kind of irony that their internal employee dress code reads like a paranoid HR document from a regional bank.
The list of prohibited items for prospective store employees is almost impressively comprehensive: Converse, visible tattoos, silver jewelry, piercings, full beards, beanies, colored contact lenses, unnatural hair colors, makeup, gauged ears, Vans, flip flops, G-Shocks, cuffs, bracelets, necklaces, sideburns, too many rings, ballet flats, goatees, sneakers, boots, fake nails, lip gloss, plucked eyebrows, unnatural hairstyles, oversized earrings, and whatever they’d decided counts as "inappropriate jewelry."
That’s a remarkable amount of specificity from a company whose entire visual identity is built on looking like you rolled out of bed in 1977. The catalog sells freedom and heat; the back office apparently requires the scrubbed aesthetic of someone who has never made an interesting personal decision. No Chucks, no piercings, no full beard—basically no trace of the subcultures that made American Apparel seem worth caring about in the first place.
Dov Charney—who was, it should be noted, a spectacular disaster of a human being in multiple documented ways—apparently wanted employees who already looked like the catalog. The problem is that the catalog looked like it was shot in someone’s apartment at 2am with willing participants, and you can’t legislate that into existence by banning G-Shocks. Most people who actually bought American Apparel at the time had visible tattoos and owned at least one pair of Vans. The brand’s actual customer and its acceptable employee were apparently two completely different species.
Applicants could, according to the policy, submit a photo for assessment. They’d evaluate whether your look met the standard. I can only imagine what the rejection letters said.