American Apparel: Meaning And Advertising

American Apparel is a clothing manufacturer, distributor and retailer based in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1989 by Canadian entrepreneur, Dov Charney, the company functions as a vertically integrated manufacturer that creates and develops their own advertising and branding campaign. American Apparel stresses the importance of mandating and promoting labour policies that reject clothing manufactures in sweatshops (AmericanApparel.net). First, this section of this paper will illustrate that American Apparel’s branding and advertising campaign is often effective in eliciting controversy over advertisements in order to attract consumers to the brand. Second, the argument will transition into how American Apparel’s branding model
Consumers become subjected to the ad in a way that they should be able to see themselves using the products through a personable expression. American Apparel employs this ideology by using models that would look like a customer of theirs. American Apparel is effective in their advertising campaign by establishing an image of their demographic through the models they use; however, the company has been repeatedly criticized for sexually suggestive use of its female models. One advertisement that sparked controversy last year was an image of a model reclining on a bed with her legs in the air, wearing only a grey sweater with her bottom half appearing to be naked (see Figure A). Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled this ad to be “gratuitous” and “likely to cause offence.” The ASA reportedly told American Apparel it must never publish this ad again, “in their current form” (Pous, “Intelligent or
American Apparel’s branding model is often viewed as controversial because of the heavily saturated sexual nature of the connotations and denotations within its advertisements. American Apparel’s branding model is often viewed as controversial because of the heavily saturated sexually connotations and denotations within its advertisements. American Apparel’s branding model not only creates ads, which are demoralizing to women, but initiate a productive dialogue on feminism in modern culture. However, American Apparel normalizes gendered images and norms for women in fashion advertising. The branding model and the manufacturing model match, because the targeted demographic are young urban adults and displaying overt images of sexuality aims to reassociate desires and controversy to the consumers and the fashions being sold by American