Portal:Greater Los Angeles/Selected article/14
American Apparel is an American clothing manufacturer, distributor, and retailer based in Los Angeles, California, created by Dov Charney, who was born in Montreal, Quebec. It is a vertically integrated clothing manufacturer, wholesaler, and retailer that also performs its own design, advertising, and marketing. It is best known for making basic, solid-color cotton knitwear such as T-shirts and underwear.
American Apparel was founded in 1989 by Canadian Dov Charney. It was during Charney's freshman year at Tufts University that the company took on the name "American Apparel" and began to experiment with screenprinting, importation and other parts of the apparel business. In 1997 after a variety of iterations, including a period of manufacturing in South Carolina, the company moved to Los Angeles. Charney began to sub-contract sewing with Sam Lim who, at the time, had a shop with 50 workers under the Interstate 10 freeway in east LA. Months later the two became partners. In 2000 American Apparel moved into its current factory in downtown Los Angeles where it continued to grow primarily as a wholesale business, selling blank T-shirts to screenprinters, uniform companies and fashion brands.