Shocking Truth Behind Netflix Trainwreck: The Cult of American Apparel

Once upon a time, American Apparel was that brand every hipster kid knew. Plain basics. Solid colors. Risqué ads in magazines. The huge “Made in USA” promise. They sold this dream of fair pay, cool jobs, and sweatshop-free fashion. Turns out, the reality inside those factory walls and corporate offices wasn’t all that dreamy.

Netflix’s new doc Trainwreck: The Cult of American Apparel pulls back the curtain in a way that’s equal parts shocking and sad. It runs just under an hour but manages to pack in stories that leave you asking how this was allowed to happen so long.

How Did American Apparel Become So Popular?

American Apparel started back in 1989. Dov Charney was the name behind it all. He pushed a new image — clothes made here in the States, workers earning more than minimum wage, and no shady overseas sweatshops.

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For a while, it worked. The brand’s stores popped up everywhere. Celebs shopped there too. There’s this bit in the doc where a former worker named Jonny Makeup brags about shutting the store down so Beyoncé could shop in peace. That’s how big American Apparel was.

But it wasn’t just the clothes that made headlines. Those ads with half-dressed models put the brand in every magazine and billboard. They pushed boundaries. And apparently, so did the guy running the show.

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What Was It Really Like Working There?

Here’s where things go off the rails. Workers in the doc say Charney’s empire was built on more than cheap tees and hoodies. Behind the scenes, it was a place where lines got blurred fast.

New hires at the LA factory would get “welcome bags.” These weren’t normal goodie bags. You’d find a vibrator, a Blackberry to be reachable 24/7, a Leica camera, and a copy of The 48 Laws of Power. The message was clear — your life now belongs to the brand.

And people talk about the culture like it was a college dorm with no rules. Employees hooking up in hallways. Charney strolling around with barely any clothes on. The doc even shows him fully naked around two women at work.

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Some workers talk about getting calls at midnight just to be screamed at. Carson, one of the former employees, says Charney once called him just to shout “I hate you!” over and over before hanging up. He says that was normal. So were 36-hour shifts.

Did It Get Worse Outside The Office?

The factory chaos didn’t stay at the factory. Some employees ended up living with Charney in his fancy house. Jonny Makeup says he didn’t mind crashing there — it felt like a “Playboy mansion for hipsters.” The doc paints a picture of young women drifting in and out. Late-night business talks mixed with personal boundaries getting erased.

Toni Jaramilla, an employment lawyer, appears in the doc too. She’s worked with women who said they were harassed while on Charney’s payroll. Many had signed hush agreements that forced complaints into private arbitration. But some ugly details leaked anyway — stories about Charney inviting barely-legal employees into his bedroom or showing up half-naked wrapped in a towel.

It wasn’t just rumors either. The doc plays real audio clips of Charney verbally tearing down his workers — calling them names you wouldn’t expect from a “cool” brand’s boss.

He denied everything. But by 2014, American Apparel’s board had enough. They fired him.

The brand didn’t last much longer. Bankruptcy hit in 2015. Again in 2016. And yet, somehow, Charney landed on his feet, working for Kanye’s Yeezy brand like none of it happened.

Even the doc closes on a clip of Charney brushing it all off, saying, “I’m not sorry about sh-t.” For a brand that once bragged about doing everything right, Trainwreck shows how wrong it all really was.