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New management at the struggling clothing company is ditching its longstanding use of amateur models in favor of leggier and higher-paid professionals — and sometimes the message isn’t being communicated delicately.
“[The] company is going through a rebranding image so will be shooting models moving forward,” LA casting agent Phira Luon wrote in a March 18 email blast to models.
“Real models. Not Instagram hoes or THOTs.”
The email (whose reference to “THOTs” was a slang abbreviation for “that ho over there”) sparked a ruckus last week, and Luon followed up with an apology for what he said “was just an inappropriate off color joke that was not intended to defame the clients name or philosophy/views in anyway.”
Still, the incident wasn’t isolated as a new executive team at American Apparel looks to clean up and “corporatize” the culture left by founder Dov Charney, who was ousted in December on accusations of willful misconduct.
Last week, American Apparel’s new senior vice president of marketing, Cynthia Erland, told as many as 30 employees at a meeting that she didn’t want models who were “too short and round,” according to three sources who were present at the meeting.
“It’s become a running joke around the office — like, ‘I can’t do this, I’m too short and round,’” according to one employee who claimed to have heard the remark. “I’ve never felt marginalized or unattractive working for this company until his past week or so.”
In a statement, Erland responded: “This is completely false. American Apparel embraces body types of all shapes, ethnicities and sizes, and our model casting has and will continue to reflect this.”
Elsewhere, new management — installed by New York hedge fund Standard General, which partnered with Charney to take control of the board last summer only to later back his ouster — has been cracking down on what it sees as a sleazy marketing strategy that developed on Charney’s watch.
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