Dov Charney

Charney was born to a Jewish family in Montreal, Quebec, on January 31, 1969. His father, Morris, an architect, and his mother, Sylvia, an artist of Syrian-Jewish descent, divorced when he was young. Charney is a nephew of architect Moshe Safdie. Charney is dyslexic and was diagnosed with ADD in kindergarten.

He attended Choate Rosemary Hall, a private boarding school in Connecticut and St. George's School of Montreal. According to Charney, he was heavily influenced by both Montreal culture and his own Jewish heritage.

While attending high school in the United States, Charney began importing Hanes and Fruit of the Loom t-shirts from the U.S. to his friends in Canada. In an interview with Vice, he described smuggling the shirts on Amtrak trains from New York to Montreal.

Charney lives in Garbutt House, a mansion atop a hill in Silver Lake. In 2022, Charney filed for bankruptcy, having owed creditors tens of million of dollars.

Activism

Legalize LA

Legalize LA was an immigration reform campaign conceived by Charney and promoted by American Apparel beginning in 2004. The campaign featured billboards and full-page ads, as well as t-shirts with the words "Legalize LA." Proceeds from the sale of the shirts were donated to immigration reform advocacy groups. The campaign called for the overhaul of immigration laws so as to create a legal path for undocumented workers to gain citizenship in the United States.

Legalize Gay

In November 2008, after the passing of Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriages in California, Dov Charney and American Apparel created "Legalize Gay" T-shirts to hand out to protesters at rallies. The positive reaction led American Apparel to sell the same shirts in stores and online.

Factory conditions

In an interview with Vice.tv, Charney spoke out against the poor treatment of fashion workers in developing countries and refers to the practices as "slave labor" and "death trap manufacturing." Charney proposed a "Global Garment Workers Minimum Wage" and discussed many of the inner workings of the modern fast fashion industry practices that creates dangerous factory conditions and disasters.

Charney's own factories have been heavily scrutinized for labor violations. In 2020, public health officials ordered the shut-down of Los Angeles Apparel due to "flagrant violations of mandatory public health infection control orders." Charney was able to sidestep the initial lockdown measures and keep employees from unemployment benefits by reopening as an essential business making and selling masks. 300 workers were infected with COVID-19, and 4 workers died before the factory was ordered to close.

Workers were also made to sign agreements releasing Charney and American Apparel from all legal claims against him or the company. These claims forced employees to go through mandatory arbitration, an internal process, and prevented lawsuits alleging workplace abuse from entering the public court system.

Charney has been the subject of several sexual harassment lawsuits, at least five since the mid-2000s, including allegations of sexual harassment, sexual assault, racist remarks, and abusive behavior against numerous employees. He has been accused of sexually harassing employees as young as 17. Due to employees signing documents revoking legal claims against Charney or the company, many lawsuits were thrown out by the courts and had to go through internal arbitration at American Apparel.

Charney denied the allegations, accusing lawyers in the lawsuits against American Apparel of extortion. Charney has said numerous times that he sees no problem with sexually pursuing his employees.

In 2004, Claudine Ko of Jane magazine published an essay narrating that Charney began masturbating in front of her while she was interviewing him. The article's publication brought extensive press to Charney. In a follow-up to her first article, Ko wrote that her article had been misconstrued, stating that her encounter with Charney "was being used to feed a flawed cliche where men are evil and omnipotent while women are mute victims lacking free will." She further questioned the notion that she had been taken advantage of: "Who was really exploited? We both were—American Apparel got press, I got one hell of a story. And that's it." Ko has never claimed Charney masturbating in front of her was non-consensual.