Hasta La Ideas

American Apparel is known for many things: affordable, domestically-produced cotton basics, admirable labor practices, Terry Richardson-esque advertisements, a controversy-courting CEO with the memorable moniker of Dov Charney, and getting slapped with lawsuits, lots and lots of lawsuits. The latest legal battle for the company, which went public in 2006 through an acquisition deal valued at $260 million, stemmed from two American Apparel billboards that depicted actor and director Woody Allen as a Hasidic Jew—with the help of a doctored frame from Annie Hall. Allen, not amused, sued the company for $10 million, prompting CEO Charney to issue a statement describing the billboards as “a parody/social statement and comedic satire to provoke discussion and public discourse about the baseless claims that had been made against American Apparel and myself, society’s reaction to lawsuits that delve into an individual’s private sexual life, and the media’s sensationalism of such matters.”

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