I Am Not a Lawyer

But he needs some very patient and expensive ones, as anyone who pays attention to American Apparel probably knows. Dov Charney is the hipster clothing company’s founder and chief executive, and he’s consistently rumored to be a sexual harasser. The LA Times ran an article today about the fourth sexual harassment lawsuit against him, and what struck me is that he’s using a really bad affirmative defense:

Nelson, 36, who worked for American Apparel for a little more than a year, claims Charney also referred to women as “whores” and “sluts” and invited her to masturbate in front of him. Nelson’s suit alleges she was fired the day she consulted a lawyer.The company contends that there was no harassment. Rather, “American Apparel is a sexually charged workplace where employees of both genders deal with sexual conduct, speech and images as part of their jobs,” Charney’s lawyers said in court documents.

Wait, it gets better…

Charney casts the world of American Apparel in particular and fashion in general as a business where everyone casually dresses and undresses for creative reasons and uses foul language with abandon.”You talk to any man who works in entertainment or fashion, and if he tells you he has not used the word ’slut’ . . . I think he’s lying.”

There’s a lot more in the article, but I think that’s the money quote. (For my purposes, anyway.)

If major clothing retailers were constantly being sued for this sort of behavior — and if it were substantially connected to their business — I could maybe buy it. Though I’m not sure a jury would.