American Apparel - Fashion Company Profile

American Apparel's original profile is built around one idea, stated twice for emphasis: the company uses a vertically integrated business model which minimizes the use of sub-contractors and offshore labor. Knitting, dyeing, sewing, photography, marketing, distribution and design all happen in its Los Angeles facilities. Its 'Made in Downtown LA' operations contributed to significant brand awareness and a cult status worldwide, the company was known for cutting-edge advertising and product branding, and it examined each part of its production process for ways to reuse, recycle and diminish its ecological footprint.

The April 2011 summary preserved underneath gives the formal shape: American Apparel is a vertically integrated manufacturer, distributor and retailer, based in downtown Los Angeles, California, employing approximately 10,000 people globally (about 5,000 in LA) at that time. The 2015-2016 wholesale catalog the original linked is a PDF asset, not a page; it is noted in this batch's README as excluded from the rebuild set, and the catalog link itself is preserved in this page's links so the asset remains reachable exactly as the original offered it.

The News Record, 2014 to 2016

The original kept a dated news trail, and this rebuild preserves its sequence. June 18, 2014: the Board of Directors voted to replace Dov Charney as Chairman and notified him of its intent to terminate his employment as President and CEO for cause, suspending him effective immediately pending a 30-day cure period, and appointing John Luttrell as Interim Chief Executive Officer. December 17, 2014: American Apparel announced the termination of founder Dov Charney. October 5, 2015: American Apparel and certain domestic subsidiaries voluntarily filed to reorganize under Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, expecting to complete the restructuring within approximately six months.

February 5, 2016: American Apparel, LLC announced that it had emerged from Chapter 11 as a private company after successfully implementing its plan of reorganization, approved by the Delaware bankruptcy court on January 27, 2016. Those four dated entries are the profile's spine: a founder removed, a filing made, a plan approved, a company emerged as private. This page adds nothing after February 2016, because the original adds nothing after February 2016 - the record is preserved as a record, and later history belongs to later sources.

How to Use This Profile

The original's branding photograph is carried by reference in the gallery below, and the preserved routes lead to the company's Chapter 11 coverage and the Fashion Blog article on the Charney termination within Apparel Search. For a researcher, the value of the page is the combination it keeps in one place: the vertically integrated LA manufacturing model described in the company's own terms, and the dated governance and bankruptcy trail that model did not prevent. Students of the industry cite this company for both halves of that sentence.

For a shopper or wholesaler, the operative part of the filing is the model itself - basics designed, knitted, dyed and sewn under one roof in Los Angeles rather than subcontracted offshore. Check any current wholesale or retail offer against the seller's own current terms; this directory page preserves the company's story as filed through 2016 and does not describe a current catalogue.

Photos From Our Original Guide