American Apparel, the clothing brand built on basics and oversexed advertising, is in the midst of a major overhaul as it adjusts to life without the leadership of its founder, Dov Charney. But as it works to turn things around, sales are slumping, management is in upheaval, workers are unhappy, and the company is facing numerous lawsuits from Charney and his loyalists.
Carli Lloyd’s amazing hat trick in a mere 16 minutes defined the US victory over Japan in the World Cup finals on July 5. The performance, which netted Lloyd 50,000 Twitter followers and crashed her website, is guaranteed to fatten her bank account with sponsorship cash—and it should. Lloyd has been a consistently tough competitor and guiding force for the US team, which fought hard at every step of its victory. She’s the kind of player, and the US the kind of team, that brands should be rushing to align themselves with.
Performance wear is typically designed for sports and extreme environments—brutally cold and windy mountain ranges, heat-baked deserts—situations where people actually need their clothing to protect them from the elements without restricting movement. Continuing advances in design, fabric technology, and manufacturing have made these clothes more high-performance than ever.
It sounds like the premise for a Portlandia sketch, but you can buy clothes made from plastic trash. Nike already makes jerseys out of it, and the popular Dutch denim brand G-Star Raw has a clothing line with musician Pharrell made from reclaimed ocean plastic. Soon you’ll be able to add sneakers to that list.
Donald Trump has had some nasty things to say about Mexicans lately. In the announcement of his 2016 bid for the US presidency, he called Mexican immigrants to the US criminals and “rapists.” Later, on Twitter, he added, “Mexico is not our friend. They’re killing us at the border and they’re killing us on jobs and trade.”
Full-cut, high-waisted, and hiked up to the anatomical waist, they appeared repeatedly on the runways at the recently wrapped men’s fashion shows in Europe. Numerous designers presented them: Dries Van Noten, Lanvin, Margarett Howell, Ami, Umit Benan, even Off-White, the growing fashion label with streetwear roots headed by Kanye West’s creative director, Virgil Abloh.
Nike announced on June 30 that Phil Knight, who co-founded the company with Bill Bowerman just over 50 years ago, will step away from his role as chairman.
Updated at noon ET on July 1 with Macy’s announcement and Trump’s statement
Saint Laurent’s latest menswear collection was titled, “A Tribute to Contemporary Californian Surf Music Culture,” but from the moment the first model hit the runway, it was clear that something else—or really someone else—was as much an inspiration: Kurt Cobain.
Junya Watanabe, the renowned Japanese designer who works under the aegis of Comme des Garçons, showed his latest men’s collection in Paris on June 26. The inspiration was clear: the vibrant prints that anchored the clothes and the artifacts the models wore and carried all signaled Africa.
As Paula Schneider, American Apparel’s recently installed CEO, starts implementing her big new plan to pull the company out of its deep financial hole, she is carefully evaluating and defining who the brand’s customer is.
China’s clothing manufacturing capabilities are so advanced, and still so relatively cheap for US fashion labels, that right now there are few good substitutes for producing there. But as Chinese production costs begin to creep up, American brands are scouting out other options, primarily in Vietnam, India, Indonesia, and even the US itself.
Etsy, the online marketplace for buying and selling all things quirky and handmade, is also home to a vibrant witch community.
Style is a tricky business. Clothes come in a limitless arrangement of shapes and colors that many of us try daily to assemble into something others will find fashionable. All too often we don’t exactly get it right, or at least leave room for improvement. A team of computer scientists is working to help.
Whatever its public image, American Apparel is a serious business. It employs more than 10,000 people, operates the largest garment factory in the US, runs upwards of 230 stores globally, and generates in excess of $600 million in sales annually. Its operations extend well beyond the stuff that catches the most headlines, such as its famously lurid, 1970s-pornography-inspired imagery and the antics of the brand’s founder and former CEO, Dov Charney, who’s as well known for his endless entanglement in workplace lawsuits as he is for building a multimillion-dollar brand.
If you’ve ever wondered where your lost airline baggage in the US ended up, there’s a good chance it’s Alabama. More precisely, the Unclaimed Baggage Center, a retail store filled with treasures from unfortunate travelers’ misplaced bags.
Nike’s new, eight-year deal to serve as the exclusive apparel provider to the NBA was only announced yesterday (June 10) but has long seemed inevitable—and not just since March, when Adidas said it wouldn’t renew its contract with the league. No, this Nike deal feels like it’s been coming for years.
Art is seen as unquantifiable. Great paintings are creative forces that transcend their brush strokes, colors, and compositions. They can’t be reduced to mere data, analyzed, and ranked by their creativity. Two computer scientists at Rutgers University respectfully disagree.
J.Crew, the American clothing retailer whose once-omnipresent washed chinos, navy blazers, and other casual-prep staples have lately struggled to find customers, says it has laid off 175 staff members and fired its chief women’s designer. According to the fashion web site Racked, the terminated employees were asked to leave immediately and escorted out by security guards.
The US has accused China of countless insidious acts, including harmful cyberattacks and spying. Its latest allegation is of the sartorial variety.
“Until we look cool to an American kid,” Mark King, the new North America head of Adidas, recently told Fortune, “we aren’t going to sell any gear to them.”
Polyester has been a fixture in our closets since 1951. That’s when the first polyester suits, made from fabric created not by a textile mill but by the American chemical company DuPont, went on sale.
The NBA finals between the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers begin tonight, offering a showdown between the Warriors’ Stephen Curry, a quickly rising star and this year’s league MVP, and the Cavaliers’ LeBron James, the best player in the game and arguably even better than the legendary Michael Jordan.
September—or thereabouts. That’s when Swedish fast-fashion chain H&M plans to start doing business at its first location in India.
