Outside the Walgreens (or maybe it’s outside the liquor store known as “The Jug Shop”), on Polk Street near where I work in San Francisco, there’s an ad for American Apparel. It pictures a racially ambiguous (but presumably) mixed-race model, who is wearing what looks like bright orange sweatpants and a white tee shirt. I say “what looks like” because, in typical American Apparel fashion, an entire view of the outfit has been forfeited in the name of clever and daring camera view angles. Quintessential of the brand that prides itself in selling “the basics” in clothing though, right?
But what actually surprised me about this ad is that the model was a dude — not what I had become used to expecting from the numerous preceding weird, pseudo-candid style American Apparel ads I had seen before. So a male model without a female model as a prop, aka a step in the right direction right? No more super-rapey ads like this one:
And he was fully clothed.
About a year ago, while in my senior year of college at Loyola University Maryland, I wrote an essay about one of American Apparel’s more recent (at the time) ads, one that featured a topless model wearing blue jeans and a strategically placed logo across her breasts that read “Made in Bangladesh” — presumably to affirm that the woman, not American Apparel’s clothing, is what is made in Bangladesh.
My essay regarding this advertisement focused centrally on the (what I considered) ludicrous idea that American Apparel prides itself on being an eco-friendly, all-American-made brand, when it completely neglects to address issues of sexual inequality and hyper-sexualization of (specifically) women in the media. (I titled the essay “The Issue of Tackling More Than One Issue At a Time”.) In it, I talked about American Apparel as a brand in general, how much I personally dislike them, and how (surprisingly) this particular ad was a tame, if not somewhat positive, example of advertising by American Apparel. I didn’t (and, notably), still don’t, know this woman’s story, and in the picture she is presented as a strong figure, proud to represent her heritage and be a symbol of American Apparel’s representation of the real global woman — not the poor, taken-advantage of sweatshop worker. That’s a good thing, right? And anyway, it was so much better than some of American Apparel’s other advertisements (see these or these.) So who was I really to judge? Except I had already seen this ad, so I think I actually had plenty of room to judge.
I ended the essay feeling similarly to the day I first saw the billboard outside of Walgreens (or the Jug Shop) — with a mixed bag of feelings that went like this: I really don’t like this brand, but this ad isn’t too bad, in fact it’s a little clever, right? But I still don’t like them. Right?
It was the first time I had seen any reference to American Apparel other than the ads that I regularly Googled to show people, and the shells of old stores that I pointed out, pleased, to whomever was walking next to or around me. I remember contemplating the idea that despite my mildly fierce disappointment and my mediocre essay about them, American Apparel hadn’t quite died yet. And certainly not in California, the company’s original birthplace. What a weird phenomenon, to realize all at once that things change all around you, and yet in some ways stay exactly the same.
I haven’t really kept up with American Apparel enough to tell anyone what to do with them and their billboards now. I don’t buy anything from the brand, but that has more to do with the fact that I find their prices laughable, especially for the simplicity of the articles of clothing that they sell. Brands can change, I guess, but until they change their prices I’ll still stay away. It’s the same way that I avoid Uber; telling people it’s because they’re a terrible company, but secretly only avoiding them because Lyft is cheaper. Ashamedly though, I did prick up my ears when I first heard about the UberPASS idea.
I guess what I’m trying to convey here is that I’m young, my tastes change, and I still don’t like American Apparel. Even though they’ve switched to ads that are a little less explicitly sexist and a little more SFW, there’s an underlying part of me that still bristles at their name. But I’m a consumer, and I’m pathetically swayed. Here’s to you to win me over, American Apparel. Please lower your prices first though.
