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Dov Charney, Like It or Not

At the largest apparel-manufacturing facility left in America, some 2,000 factory workers pick from two million pounds of fabric stored on-site, then cut, sew, and finish garments. Posters, billboards, advertisements--they're all conceived and produced in the factory too, and soon a dye shop will be added. Charney once pushed an image of AA as socially conscious and sweatshop-free, but today he says the story is vertical integration. While other companies have fled America to save money, he's making a killing by staying put.

Jane Buckingham, president of the Intelligence Group (formerly Youth Intelligence), whose Cassandra Report is the arbiter of what's cool with America's youth, says that American Apparel is one of the most influential brands going. Her group surveys two sets of kids--trendsetting early adapters and mainstream followers--to get a sense of which brands are moving young people. It was among the trendsetters that American Apparel first came up a few years back. Today the brand is prominent among both trendsetters and followers, straddling a difficult line. It appears high in every category of cool--sitting alongside brands such as Marc Jacobs and Diesel that are far more expensive and spend exponentially more money on marketing. Buckingham points to a convergence of factors--the sexy imagery of American Apparel's ad campaigns, the relative inexpensiveness, the social consciousness, and the fit. "It's sort of what you want to feel," Buckingham says. "You want to feel sexy in a T-shirt that costs $12."

When he's in new york, Charney rises late in his corporate apartment, typically around noon, despite the fact that he schedules all of the day's appointments for 11:30 to 12:30. He has no assistant, carries no organizer, and rarely checks his voice mail. You can send him an e-mail, which he will eventually acknowledge, or you can just show up around noon on the corner of Houston and Orchard, where he lives and entertains above the Lower East Side shop he considers American Apparel's prototype store. Soon enough, he will appear, carrying a tall Lucite glass of instant coffee he spooned into some room-temperature water on his way out the door.

Today he starts with Ricky, a contractor who does odd jobs for the New York stores, everything from small renovations to delivering supplies. Taking over a table in a nearby pizza joint, Charney tells Ricky that he needs a few good men to oversee all facets of maintenance for what will soon be a $50 million operation in New York alone. "Right now there's a fight to win top-notch T-shirts, and we're going to win," Charney says, tugging at his tight V-neck. "This is very valuable what we're talking about."

Leaving Ricky with an offer to join up full-time, he heads across the street to the store, fielding cell phone calls while picking at problems. This display looks awful--put a swimsuit on it. We're out of mediums--that shouldn't happen. Why aren't we using this space? It's costing me money. He grabs a lime-green polo and puts it on over his T-shirt. "Something's wrong with the collar," he tells a kid who, like most everyone on the floor, has some version of a dark scruffy hipster haircut. "Get me Siori," he says, referring to an American Apparel designer summoned from Montreal to address these sorts of crises. They will make notes, take some Polaroids, and FedEx the changes to L.A., where a revised garment will go back into production tomorrow.

In the basement of the store, it's a manic enterprise--boxes are unpacked, shirts are folded, a guy is taping up tiny plastic bags that Charney plans to stuff with "little underwears." The bags, he explains, save money because they increase density on the floor. Initially, men's briefs struggled. But since being bagged and placed in bins near entrances, they've become a bestseller. That's found money--the underwears are made from fabric scraps.

"I think if we can get another $400,000 out of this space, we're golden," Charney says of the basement storeroom. "This store is a prototype store; there should be nothing wrong. What we're doing is getting this one right and then we spread it like an infection." It's that easy, he believes. Get one store perfect and the next 999 need only follow directions.

Charney's phone rings, as it does every 20 or 30 seconds. "Yeah, okay," he says into a headset. "Empire State Building? Put your offer in and let's talk next week." The New York landmark, it seems, has a retail space he's eyeing. "It's what, 250 for 2,000 square feet? It's a sweet deal. Let's put the gun in his mouth and make the deal. You make that deal and you're the big d-- in town." Charney is also shopping Tribeca, Midtown, Murray Hill, Rockefeller Center, the no man's land by the Garden, and several locations near the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. If you are a pedestrian in New York, you will see American Apparel. (This being New York real estate, however, it's a slow, tedious process, made more so by competition. "Bank of America keeps knocking me off," Charney says. "We both want the same size box--3,000 square feet--and guess what? They've got better credit.")