Made in Los Angeles

American Apparel did something almost nobody else was doing in fast fashion: they made everything in America and made that fact the product. Los Angeles, downtown factory, workers paid decent wages—the pitch was that you could look good without having to think too carefully about who made your clothes and under what conditions. Whether that held up under scrutiny was another matter, but the aesthetic was its own argument.

Bold colors. Minimal branding. Bodies photographed in natural light with no visible retouching, which in the mid-2000s felt genuinely radical before it hardened into its own kind of cliché. The ad campaigns were often shot by Dov Charney—the founder, a complicated and eventually disgraced figure—on film, using employees and customers rather than professional models. The result was a specific visual language that felt both intimate and cool: a 1970s European softcore magazine crossed with a serious fashion editorial. A lot of people found it creepy; just as many found it exciting. It was almost certainly both at the same time.

By 2012 their stores were everywhere—the bright lights, the logo-free basics stacked floor to ceiling in every conceivable color. If you had any connection to urban style, to art school, to late-night parties where people cared about what they wore but performed not caring, you were wearing something from American Apparel. A bodysuit. A terry cloth hoodie. That specific cotton jersey t-shirt that fit exactly right and came in forest green and salmon and heather grey and seventeen other colors you didn’t know you needed until you saw them.

The Halloween range was a natural extension of the whole project—existing basics recontextualized as costume components rather than new product developed for the holiday. A leotard becomes a dancer. High-waisted shorts become an 80s aerobics instructor. Bold colors, minimal design, no compromises—as the pitch always went. For a few years at least, they earned it.