Trainwreck: The Cult of American Apparel

Ever wondered what the world might look like if it were populated mostly by people with ADHD? The rise and fall of American Apparel may offer some clues. "I was born overcharged," said the brand's notorious founder, Dov Charney - a man who exuded the energy of someone perpetually overstimulated, like he'd just done a line and sprinted into a business meeting.

American Apparel began with a refreshingly noble vision: locally made basics, radical transparency, and a willingness to give wildly inexperienced young people a shot. It was a kind of DIY utopia: idealistic, frenetic, and exhilarating. In many ways, it mirrored the moral impulses often seen in people with ADHD: a reflexive sense of justice, inclusivity, and anti-establishment zeal.

But utopias built on dopamine rarely endure. When the 2008 financial crisis hit, the cracks became chasms. Charney's manic ambition, once mistaken for brilliance, revealed its darker underside: grandiosity, volatility, and a spectacular lack of impulse control. The company's house of mirrors collapsed under the weight of lawsuits, scandals, and financial mismanagement. Charney was ousted, but the damage had already been done.

What we saw in American Apparel wasn't simply ADHD left unchecked - it was ADHD laced with a potent dose of narcissism. Charney, born to Jewish parents and likely misunderstood or overcorrected for his childhood hyperactivity, seems to have developed narcissistic defences that grew more brittle and maladaptive with age.

This is a tragically familiar arc for many neurodivergent children: shamed for their differences, they often internalise confusion, guilt, or fragmented identities that manifest in adulthood as superficial charm and overreaching confidence, domination disguised as vision, and a one-way ticket towards inevitable self-destruction.

While several former employees speak candidly about their time at the company, the documentary skims the surface of their experiences. We're left with snapshots of pain, but little space to understand how they saw themselves within the cultural hurricane Charney whipped up. There is emotional residue, but little insight. The growth in ADHD understanding and awareness came too late for Charney and those of his employees who saw themselves reflected in him.

I have about as much fashion sense as I do Spidey-sense, so I didn't even recognise the fashion brand "American Apparel" until I watched this programme, nor had I heard of the company's discredited founder and former chief executive Dov Charney.

Nevertheless, having in the last year watched a couple of shocking, revelatory documentaries on two other apparently predatory high street owners, i.e. Mohammed Al Fayed at Harrods of London and Mike Jeffries of Abercrombie and Fitch, I had to watch this takedown of Charney.

Told with the participation of a number of ex-employees, we see the arrival of this upstart new kid on the retail block with Charney promoting his new anti-designer brand of functional rather than flashy clothing which took off in the early 2000's as the company profits boomed and opened up many stores, both across the States and in different countries around the world. Promoted aggressively by highly suggestive advertising campaigns, the brand connected with a new young audience and looked here to stay.

Charney also appeared to have a different outlook on the manufacture and distribution of his wares, making everything in-house in America and refusing to go for the cheaper outsourcing options available abroad. More than that, he welcomed immigrants into his workforce without discrimination and paid them higher wages than the industry average.

We're told nothing about Charney's beginnings other than that he's of Canadian- American background and naturally he's nowhere interviewed directly by the programme makers, who instead rely on archive video footage, audio-tapes and many, many stock photographs of him to illustrate the story.

It all seemed to be going so well for this disruptive, innovative new business, shaking up their more established competitors on the high street, but then the 2008 recession hit and bit with Charney recklessly continuing to expand even as consumer demand slumped and the company losses deepened.

The bigger story here, however, is about Charney's own personal behaviour as we learn of his reprehensible personal conduct which at first is presented as being eccentric, with him playing both good cop and bad cop to his employees or walking around his office in the nude but the tone becomes much darker as we learn of the accusations of sexual abuse he carried out on many young women in his employment. Conveniently, however, he had the complainants sign non-disclosure-agreements, which are now being challenged in the court.

All this contributed to his fall as he lost the leadership of his own company, although we learn in the post-titles that he seems to have risen phoenix-like from the flames to another high position in the fashion industry where he presumably still works today.

This documentary lasted under one hour, in contrast to the two others mentioned earlier which each required a number of episodes to fully tell their story. That was the problem here, the story felt rushed, unbalanced and sensationalist.

I got the message that Charney is a weird, unhinged individual with abhorrent sexual predelictions reminiscent of the disgraced Jeffrey Epstein, but this programme seemed more interested in the individual tales of the flamboyant ex-employee witnesses they lined up for the prosecution.

Nevertheless, if this programme helps the truth to come out and so expose another apparent user and abuser of young people to gratify their own depraved needs, all well and good. That said, there will be those who, like me decry this type of tabloid-style trial by television exposé and who similarly think that this particular investigation could have been done with more rigour and more seriousness.

It's quite clear from this short documentary that the workplace of American apparel was an unusual one and at times and abusive one. Unfortunately these workplaces are still common across the country and it's a good thing to get it all out in the open. It is a good thing to expose abusers in this format.

With that said, the titular claim of this being a cult was only sparsely substantiated by the content of the documentary. It seemed that a great deal of the "cult" claim hinged on the fact that the CEO was domineering, plus that he handed all of his new hires a copy of a book in a care package.

No, this was just an abusive workplace. These people were not brainwashed, they just knew they could not readily find a better job anywhere else, people that lacked traditional education etc & were thus locked into the job for longer than they ought to have been.

We overuse words like "cult" in our society.

Back in the early aughts, I was all-in on American Apparel, stocking up on solid-color basics and made-in-USA undies while buying into the brand's earnest mission of immigrant rights and ethical manufacturing. Like many idealistic thirtysomethings, I desperately wanted to believe. But as "Trainwreck: The Cult of American Apparel" lays out in a tight 60 minutes, behind the sweatshop-free façade was a dizzying cocktail of sleaze, ego, and chaos. This latest entry in Netflix's "Trainwreck" series doesn't go too deep, but it doesn't really need to; it's enough to remind you how easily people fall for charismatic creeps promising virtue, coolness, and free-market salvation. Dov Charney, the brand's infamous founder, plays like a tragicomic antihero from a Bret Easton Ellis novel (or maybe a Reddit thread). Watch this doc and ponder how we got here; late-stage capitalism never looked so well-lit and overexposed.

Interesting documentary. I'd heard of the brand but not the background story. The 4 ex staff were quite irritating the overuse of the word 'like' became quite unbearable (when you hear it you can't unhear it) We we're trying to count how many were actually said, we eventually lost track of the actual documentary. The gay dude (can't remember his name) said the word 4 times in one sentence?! One of the women (again can't remember the name) every second word from her mouth was 'like' ?! It was bizarre, I've heard of people complaining about it, but never understood why it would bother people so much. Now I know lol.