American Apparel, Dov Charney and Me

January 22, 2024

The first thong I ever bought was at an American Apparel store. I was a freshman in high school and shopping with new friends in Soho. Holding that skimpy piece of white cotton in my hands, I remember feeling both embarrassed and titillated. At fourteen, I wasn’t just buying a few cents worth of fabric, I was buying my way into adulthood.

Or… was it adulthood? The American Apparel bodies in magazine ads and billboards scattered throughout Manhattan seemed both impossibly mature and preternaturally youthful. As an early teen, I was only one of those things: youthful. But it was a youth devoid of sex, filled instead with a near-constant shame and malingering sense of unattractiveness.

After a few more shopping stints and nights of underage drinking at someone’s ‘free crib,’ (i.e an apartment temporarily devoid of parents) I’d grow apart from those friends. In fact, I became increasingly isolated as high school progressed, and graduated with few lasting social connections.

At that point, American Apparel was no more; I vaguely followed the headlines: sexual harassment allegations against a former CEO, mismanagement, bankruptcy… a cultural moment washed away with the tide.

By Lily Lady

I didn’t care. Any thongs that I’d accumulated by then would be replaced with boxers during college. I wasn’t into fashion and the fun-loving, hypersexual atmosphere American Apparel hawked wasn’t reflective of my early experiences of sex.

At 18, the sex I was having was never for pleasure, sometimes for money, and always for power. Most of my partners and all of my early clients were men significantly older than me. I played up my youthfulness by marketing myself via a very specific, barely-legal archetype, one that I found socially and fiscally remunerative.

I started crashing with this guy who worked at a Wall Street hedge fund any time I’d return to New York on college break. What began as me renting his spare room on Airbnb turned into a mutually beneficial relationship: the guy — let’s call him Joey — was closeted and wanted to have a girl on his arm to take to parties. While unspoken, the transaction was clear: Joey got a platonic escort and I got a free place to stay.

One of Joey’s friends gave me her expired ID so I could get into clubs and bars with them. On nights out, I would dress in full femme drag: an old pair of American Apparel jelly heels and spaghetti strap dresses. Joey’s male friends started calling him my ‘uncle.’ I could tell that most of them wanted to sleep with me (a few of them did) but also that my presence as a much-younger addition to the social mix made them uneasy. Seeing them squirm with discomfort turned me on and felt like role play.

This era at Joey’s felt healing, somehow. I was able to capitalize on the power of youth after being bogged down by depression, discomfort and uncertainty during my actual underage years. At college, I was living more ‘authentically’ when it came to gender and sexuality, and then could enact some lighthearted femme role play back in New York.

After college, I got into the writing scene in the city, going to readings at KGB and hosting my own at Honey’s in Brooklyn. I wrote quickie, a collection of short poems and early iPhone photography. The book took me to Los Angeles on a promo tour in 2022. I vaguely considered a limited-run merchandise line, maybe manufactured at the Los Angeles Apparel factory. But mostly I wanted to meet Dov. Or, rather, I thought that Dov would want to meet me.

I sent an out-of-the-blue Instagram Direct Message to Dov and invited myself to the factory. Within an hour, I was in South-Central Los Angeles, pulling into a massive compound of industrial buildings. I was 24, wearing a tiny button-up romper with my hair in braids. A middle-aged man in sweats and an oversized white T-shirt came out to greet me.

He gave me a brief tour of the massive space, talking to everyone he passed and never slowing down. At a sewing station, he opened up the Shazam app on his phone to figure out what song was playing.

“What is this? It’d be great for TikTok!” he exclaimed and kept walking while tapping into his phone. I followed behind him into an office area, towards a door that read DOV CHARNEY. I sat down confidently in the seat facing his desk.

A little brown mutt trotted in, tail wagging.

“That’s Barbara,” he said, with affection.

I scooped her into my lap. She licked my face. I felt Dov watching me.

“So, what can I do for you?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

I looked around at the twin mattress on the floor in the corner. The framed photo of Bill Clinton at a deposition in the Paula Jones case. The Bill Cosby book on the shelf. The walls covered with printouts from his various legal cases.

What immediately came to mind as a response was, “what wouldn’t you do for me?”

This isn’t an article about Dov Charney. The influential individual — whether it be Dov, or Elon, or Ye — is primarily of interest to me symbolically. They serve an opportunity to work discursively, in order to investigate the following question, among others: how do we reckon with complicated figures, especially those who add to the realm of cultural production while at the same time perpetuating harm in and around those sites of production?

Through American Apparel and his current facsimile of a company, Los Angeles Apparel, Dov has entrenched certain forms of femme hypersexuality as the normative expression of both age, race and gender, as accessed through commerce; Dov the individual, on the other hand, symbolizes a certain kind of Ur-Masculine who is unrepentantly tethered to an unbridled id.

"Sleeping with people you work with is unavoidable!" he told reporter Hadley Freeman of the Guardian in 2017. Indeed, Dov’s initial splash in the press was related to his flippant and unapologetic stance on workplace dynamics; he made what seemed like intentionally inflammatory statements about sleeping with his employees. Sexual harassment in the workplace and even sexual assault allegations soon followed, all of which settled out of court.

As someone who has slept with people I’ve worked with in most of the jobs I had, I never really cared about any of Dov’s workplace-related statements. Sure, I was mostly sleeping with restaurant coworkers who worked similar roles as me. Dov’s ability to hire and fire, sponsor visas and the like changed the balance of power. But as I took on other roles — like working on film sets or at a tech startup — I too wanted to sleep with my much-older bosses, because of that very power imbalance. And sometimes I did, for no other reason than to take the taboo to its logical conclusion and see what lay on the other side.

When it comes to the sexual assault allegations against Dov, I find myself returning to the aforementioned question: how do we talk about hard things? How do we keep someone in the cultural fold who is an industry innovator (which Dov arguably is), who might become even more ideologically radicalized if he’s completely ‘canceled,’ who has created numerous jobs with fair wages and health benefits for undocumented immigrants, yet who has still not holistically acknowledged any harms he might have caused within the workplace with regards to sexual assault and harassment?

In the ensuing years since our initial meeting, I did some paralegal work for Los Angeles Apparel. I wrote some copy for the website. A bunch of small things added up to what I’d call a strange but genuine affection for one another.

Later in 2022, I was on a call with Dov and a former investor in American Apparel, who would go on to hire me to write for him. Dov was making the introduction, and at one point he said, “I’ve been dating 20 year olds for 20 years now, and this is the best batch of them yet.”

I remember thinking: what he’s saying is that he thinks I’m smart. And even though we aren’t dating and never have, he’s saying he values the disposition of ‘being smart’ in combination with ‘being young.’

After I hung up the FaceTime, I felt a sense of foreboding. I took a deep breath and recognized a feeling of… jealousy? I couldn’t figure it out. I wasn’t always going to be young, so the anxiety was clear: this market asset would depreciate in value until an inevitable and prolonged period of cultural obsolescence. But my jealousy was harder to explain.

I’ll arrive at jealousy by way of Emily.

Emily. My first girlfriend.

I used to cancel plans on Emily last minute all the time. I was vague with my emotions and made sure she always came over to my place, as I never once made the effort to stay at hers. I was the epitome of a flaky fuck-boy, keeping the upper hand through half-truths, missed calls and just enough attention to keep stringing her along.

One day, Emily sent me a series of texts expressing concern and confusion about my shitty behavior. She ended the text thread with: “Anyway, I really care about you and would love to spend some quality time together sometime this weekend if you’re around. LMK.”

I texted back “Hmm ya, sounds chill. Could work.”

I felt sick with this power I had over Emily… sick with power.

Eventually, I just felt sick.

Photo by Taryn Segal

Years later, I got fitted for my first suit after being invited to my friends Grace and Zoe’s wedding last spring. I dropped over a grand in cash at Brooks Brothers, being catered to by an employee there who kept asking if I wanted the pants tailored in a more feminine way.

My photographer friend Taryn Segal came to document the fitting. I sent a photo to Dov, who responded back, “Young Dov.” I felt elated.

There’s the jealousy.

Do I want to be Dov? I honestly don’t know. I think age gaps are sexy. I think power trips are sexy. What I’m reckoning with now is a (perceived or real) impending loss of power, and a slow recognition that I might not be interested in either side of the dynamic anymore.

It’s the end of 2023 and I’m riding in Dov’s old school Toyota Camry (“These are great, so old school, I bought two of them”). We’re driving west to Brentwood, for a meeting with Ben Kohn, the CEO of Playboy. There's a potential for all of us to work together, and we’re meeting for the first time to discuss it. The previous night, Dov and I spent two hours on FaceTime (Dov from his room at the factory and me from a room in his Silver Lake mansion) to talk it over.

In Brentwood, Ben orders a stack of pancakes and talks about Playboy’s current “capital light” model. Dov and Ben dive into financial specifics for the majority of the first half hour. I chime in here and there, essentially asserting that whatever they spend hosting at Tao in Vegas, for example, could be cut in half and reinvested in underground, invite-only parties with relevant DJs and better locations. And a quarterly zine couldn’t hurt, either.

About 45 minutes into the meeting, Ben gets up to go to the bathroom. Dov turns to me and says, “You’re talking too much.”

I keep going back to the original question. What can I do for you?

Ever since that meeting, Dov feels like a meal eaten right before getting food poisoning. I delighted in the meal and now I delight in it being out of my system.

Maybe what I learned from American Apparel was a lesson in body autonomy that has nothing to do with clothes. Dov is just another piece in a greater praxis of self-discovery. The pattern of aligning myself with powerful men and then feeling enthralled by games of mutual exploitation has served me, and I’ve relished in the years that it’s worked. I’ve taken knocks in the scarier moments when it hasn’t. I’m finally ready to be on neither side of the paradigm.

Culture

Mowalola x Miss Sixty Launch with H. Lorenzo

I swing my legs over the ropes that guard the VIP entrance. Always over (I’m 5’10), never under. I’m late to the H. Lorenzo x Mowalola event, and the line is wrapped around the block. I don’t want to be an asshole, but I hate waiting in lines; it just ruins everything.

“Hey, my friend is DJing right now. My name should be down,” I say.

The youngish security guard looks me up and down. I have made an adventurous choice for this type of crowd. Neon pink hoodie, bright orange vest, my Raimundo jeans, and Jeremy Scott animal print sneakers. I let him take me in and look over his shoulder. Hmmm… I will be swathed in darkness when he lets me in. Dark night, dark clothes, dark makeup, furs, hoods, leather accessories, and sunglasses. I don’t recognize anyone, but it’s hard to tell who anyone is because I can’t see after 8 pm without my glasses. Night blindness. I can still catch a vibe though.

“She’s in the bathroom,” Mr. Guard says, interrupting my squinting.

“Who?,” I ask.

“The woman in charge of the list.”

That’s a drag. I want to dance. Lately, I am going out in the name of music.

“So…can I go in?” I ask.

“Just wait for her to get back.”

That sounded fine. I wait. The outdoor smoking area is packed. I imagine the inside to be a mirror of this, hopefully with people dancing instead of blowing smoke in each other’s eyes.

“You got instagram?” The guard asks me after about ten minutes of flirting.

“Can I go in?” I said.

He laughs. He lets me in the event without a wristband.

Inside, I understand why the other guard was gone for so long. I made a mental note to not drink too much liquid, the bathroom line is almost as long as the line outside. The party is popping, far from a flop.

I push through the crowd solo, following the speakers to the DJ booth. The immersive visuals provided me with enough light to make out Mowalola in a gold bikini and her low rise denim. My pulse races like the horse printed on the front of her coochie. That’s the point of the collection, obviously.

My hips swing around before I head towards the open bar. I smile to myself, noting that it’s a mezcal forward menu. I see a drink that disgusts me so I order it without hesitation. It’s a mezcal coffee concoction. My heart ’s ran through already, why not go all in? I head back to dance when I hear Shigecki’s set start. I’m jumping around, sweating, and when I pause for a beat I let out a yelp. There are strippers working poles opposite and behind the DJ booth. Good. Events should be sexy.

I end the night smoking my friend’s Korean strawberry cigarettes taking in the air of cool- when a man comes up to me wild-eyed exclaiming that we look just like one another. I look at him- no, not at all. I turn slowly, remembering what I should be doing: listening to DJ G2G’s set. Back inside, she is playing reggaeton type beats with lasers beaming out of her headphones (I want these). A rave in it of herself.

Too bad all the events end at 2 am in LA.

Culture

Vans Pipe Masters 2024

On the first night, Steve Van Doren and the Vans team hosted the heat draw for the competitors at a casual backyard barbecue. The son of Vans’ co-founder Paul Van Doren, Steve has worked in the family business for decades, and is now known as the Ambassador of Fun. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a cowboy hat made out of old shoes, he was definitely dressed for the part. The surfers, along with family and friends gathered in a relaxed setting as 40 men’s and 20 women’s names were drawn from a shoebox. The competition would run in 3 rounds, the top 4 men and 4 women with the highest scores moving onto the finals. When asked about their strategies, most gave answers along the lines of “get waves.” Refreshingly simple.

After waiting a few days for favorable conditions, the first day of competition kicked off with Women’s Round 1. It was finally time to see Pipeline in action. Banzai Pipeline is known as one of the most dangerous places to surf due to the powerful waves breaking over shallow and sharp reefs. With the potential to crash into the rocky edges or have leashes caught in caves, it takes a ton of skill–-and even more courage–to surf here. No stranger to these risks, the first heat included favorites Caity Simmers and “Queen of Pipeline” Moana Jones Wong, who showed off exactly why they’d been successful here in the past. Midway through the heats, Mother Nature decided to throw in another element as a light drizzle turned into a proper downpour. Rain or shine, the athletes went out unfazed, focused on getting their first points on the board.

After another short day’s break, the competition continued with the women’s second round and the men’s first. The beach was filled with spectators, locals and tourists alike, as the competition was free for all to attend. While fans rooted equally for the women and men, the most popular were the local Hawaiian athletes, which made up about half the competition. The women started off the day again, hyping up the crowd with incredible rides. One ride by Bettylou Sakura Johnson earned the first Bag of Cash of the day– a cash prize (of undisclosed amount) awarded in a brown paper bag to any surfer that pulls off a wow moment, excites the crowd, and pulls off something spectacular regardless of what the conditions might look like.

Winds picked up as the men’s competition began and two strategies quickly emerged: an aggressive approach, targeting any decent waves to build small scores; and a patient approach, waiting for the perfect wave to chase a high single score. Even the waves that were unrideable were a spectacle in itself. The sheer size, illustrated by the length of surfboards riding up and over, and the following crash of white water spray was hypnotizing. Then imagining having to experience it out on the water, duck diving under or being lifted over, brought a renewed respect for the surfers.

After watching these early rounds, it was time for office to head back to the cold. With the competition officially spanning from December 8-20, it seemed the forecast was gearing up for some massive waves— and it didn’t disappoint. Following from afar through Vans’ Instagram and live updates, we saw the full extent of what it means to surf at Pipeline. After a series of electrifying and daring surfs, the 2024 winners were crowned: Erin Brooks and Nathan Florence.

The thrill of watching top athletes compete at the highest level of their sport, even remotely, never fails to inspire. Few sports surrender so completely to the forces of nature as surfing does. And at its core, surfing is all about having a deep respect for the ocean—its unpredictable whims, its immense power, and its ever-changing moods.

Culture

The Cost of Queendom

December 17, 2024

One summer afternoon in New York, a few days after their New York premiere of the acclaimed documentary Queendom, office met up with documentary filmmaker Agniia Galdanova and producer Igor Myakotin at a tattoo parlor on the west side of Manhattan. While Agniia received a tattoo of the portmanteau “DOCU CUNT” across her fists, she — unfazed by the needle on her knuckles — answered our questions alongside Igor about the making of the stirring story that has traveled around the world.

One of the opening scenes of Queendom depicts a ritual many of us are all too familiar with in the 21st century. Jenna Marvin, the documentary film’s central subject, takes her friend along with her to take photos for Instagram. When she finds a suitable backdrop, she poses, poses, poses, and then reviews the photos. Dissatisfied, she gives her notes, and then returns to pose, pose, pose again.

By Brook Aster
Photos by Liv Solomon

The ritual may be familiar, but nothing else about the scene — from its setting to its stakes — is ordinary. The backdrop behind Jenna is a sweeping expanse of ice and snow in a small Russian port town called Magadan. Jenna is dressed in drag, but not drag of the Rupaul’s Drag Race variety; her drag has been referred to as “creature drag.” Her signature white face paint, platform heels and surrealist costumes, with their exaggerated sculptural proportions and use of duct tape and repurposed items, catches the ire of her neighbors and the love of online admirers alike. Jenna eventually accrued a following on social media for her public and technically illegal drag performances, which often involved little more than her walking or being in public spaces but nevertheless were often met with abuse and threats of imprisonment.

But when Agniia first encountered Jenna, she hadn’t yet reached the level of virality that would eventually come in the years to follow. The filmmaker was researching different drag performers in Russia for her sophomore project, which she thought would be a docuseries, when she heard from a friend about a young drag queen from Magadan. “I was like, this is impossible. I have to meet this person,” Agniia remembers. “And I could not actually go meet her because I was in Moscow and she was in Saint Petersburg, so I sent a friend of mine with whom I’d been studying with in film school, and she went and filmed the sample.” The simple video, showing Jenna and her friend getting dressed up for a party, struck something in Agniia. The drag was an earlier, more prototypical version of the style Jenna is now known for; less duct tape and ornamentation, but still that signature striking makeup. “Something sparked. I knew I just had to stick to this feeling,” Agniia says. She decided to turn the docuseries into a documentary solely focused on Jenna.

Around that time, the entire world came to a grinding halt: the onset of COVID-19 pandemic had just led to lockdowns around the globe. With only a couple thousand followers on social media at that point in time, Jenna had tried to branch out and connect with other drag artists in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, but faced rejection; her drag was extremely unconventional, and not even other drag artists quite understood it. “I think we found each other at the right moment, because nobody knew what to do, how to cope with all this,” Agniia says. “Jenna was saying that she was lost, and she also didn't know how to develop her art next.”

Unlike some of the other artists Agniia had initially researched, Jenna didn’t need much convincing to allow the camera into her life. “[Especially] after COVID came, there wasn't really [any] drag in my life,” Jenna recounts when I speak to her later over Zoom. “I realized that what drag is for me is not just a costume, a dress, something that you leave, that you take off and then in the dead of the night you put back on. Later, I understood that this is who I am, that I am art and I am drag, and that this is way bigger and more important than just clothing or costume.”

[LEFT TO RIGHT: Agniia Galdanova, Jenna Marvin, Igor Myakotin]

When it came time to move into production stages, Agniia sent a clip to Igor, who had been referred to her by a past colleague. When Igor saw the footage, he was similarly struck by Jenna — and even more struck to find out she shared his small hometown of Magadan. “It was just so fateful to know that I also come from this town, and I've never seen it through this cinematic lens, through the vision that Agniia has,” he says. “I was mesmerized by the footage, mesmerized by Jenna. I thought to myself, I have to do everything I can [for us] to work together, whatever the collaboration is gonna be.”

The two followed Jenna for over three years; Agniia first relocated to St. Petersburg, where Jenna had taken up residence after leaving her grandparents’ home in Magadan, and later Jenna moved in with Agniia in her home in Moscow. All the while, Igor and his team worked remotely from the United States to meet Agniia’s production needs. Inevitably, with all their time spent together, Agniia and Jenna became close.

“There is an unspoken rule in documentary filmmaking that you have to keep this line, and you can’t overcome certain boundaries,” Agniia explains. “In my first film, it was not an easy subject [to do this with] as well. I was following a family for seven months, and [we became] close, but I always was trying to keep my distance, and was constantly thinking about it. How much should I say? How much should I give?” But as she got to know Jenna, it became clear that this time, that distance wouldn’t be possible. “With Jenna almost from the very beginning, I was like, fuck it. That’s not going to work with this one. I'm going to break this rule 100%. I never regretted it, because that's actually what built up the trust that is there.”

As Jenna's public performances continued and began to garner more public attention, her online audience multiplied. Among her virtual admirers was French fashion maven Michèle Lamy, who would eventually sign onto Queendom as an executive producer. Lamy's discovery of Jenna led to an invitation to walk in the Rick Owens show in Paris — her first time modeling, and her first time leaving Russia in her life. Of course, Agniia and her camera followed. But most of their excursions were not so glamorous; many of Jenna's performances shown in the documentary were undertaken at a real risk to her physical safety, and by extension, to the safety of Agniia. But neither of them were daunted.

I remember who I am. And this is what carries me through this life.

After all, Jenna was used to both taking risks and documenting them well before she was the subject of a film; she and her friends long filmed the often impassioned, sometimes violent reactions of strangers and policemen to their mere existence in public spaces in drag. And after a protest performance in which she wrapped herself in the Russian flag, Jenna was kicked out of beauty school, her last attempt at a practical route before pursuing her drag as a full time venture.

The only time Agniia tried to dissuade her was on Paratrooper’s Day, a Russian military holiday often characterized by the drunk soldiers roaming the streets. The risk for violence was especially high. “On Paratroopers Day, people say you can't come out in skinny jeans or with nail polish,” Jenna describes. “[I think] you should do the opposite. You should really make a statement and come out wearing what you want to wear. I think that clothes, what we wear, is really at some point beyond our psyche, our mind, our understanding. It is as if it's a certain kind of spice that is enticing you and you follow the scent of that spice and you don't see anything else except that scent and you follow it. That's how I see it.”

“I was like, ‘girl, maybe we should not do that,’” Agniia says. “Igor was stressing out and she told us, ‘well, you don't need to follow me. I'm gonna go and do it. I don't care if you're coming or not.’” In the end, Jenna ventured out for her performance anyway, protesting the then-recent invasion of Ukraine. Agniia followed. Not shown in the film is that the two were arrested, and managed to talk the police out of their arrest.

Not too long after, she would have to leave Russia again, this time moving for Paris for good; the film follows her struggles to get a visa in time to leave the country after the onset of the war. “It's already been three years that I've been in France, and it is important for me to understand and remember who I am, and to remember that pain, those moments when we were back in Russia doing drag, fighting with the police and law enforcement,” Jenna says. “It is important that this resistance continues and that those voices are not being silenced. Yes, here there’s much more freedom, there are pride parades and queer people can get married, but this is an illusion because there are also places where you cannot get married and you cannot enjoy the same freedoms. I cling to who I am, who I was from the very beginning. I remember who I am. And this is what carries me through this life.”

“Meeting Jenna gave me hope for the future of the country, because governments come and go, people in power come and go, but the generations change at the same time,” Igor says. “So it warms my heart to see that someone like her came from somewhere like that. If I saw her back then at a similar age, it would be even more personal. I think I would’ve accepted myself as gay quicker, and I wouldn't be nervous or closed and not open to the world or myself… Working with this project also meant that we were amplifying the voices of many, many people who couldn't speak like Jenna could.”

For Agniia, the honor of telling Jenna's story is only paralleled by the honor of having her in her life. “We found each other,” Agniia says. “And what I learned from Jenna is so precious; about life, about art, about surviving. And I appreciate it a lot. This film grew so much larger than just a documentary, because I have a family now, a working family.”

Queendom is now available to stream on Apple TV.