Cameron Moll has been getting a lot of link love for his latest post where he takes a stand against American Apparel.
The Los Angeles based clothing company is a favourite among designers for its high quality t-shirts that can be bought in bulk for screen printing. They pride themselves in being ‘locally produced’ (locally meaning the US) by well paid workers, as opposed to in a sweatshop in the far east. One well-known company that uses AA as a wholesale source is Threadless.
Cameron Moll is a renowned designer and author, known for amongst others his personal weblog Authentic Boredom, his book on Mobile Web Design, and the job site Authentic Jobs. I admire his work and count myself lucky for having viewed one of his talks in person. (Way back at @media 2006 in London.) Cameron takes offense at the advertising, which is “suggestive at best and explicit at worst”. He feels offended by this, and has decided to “put his money where is mouth is”. He will no longer use American Apparel as his source for t-shirts, nor buy any screened tee which is printed on AA materials.
American Apparel billboard by Flickr user @MSG
There are indeed some quite explicit ads, which I understand might be offensive to some, like Cameron. I completely respect that.
There’s more to this discussion though, as is evident in the comments that follow Cameron’s article. As you might know, Cameron was previously employed by one of the driving forces behind the campaign to amend the California Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, or as they call it “Preserving the Divine Institution of Marriage“.
While Cameron tries to “keep Church and State separate” in his blog posts and comments, I do feel this is relevant here.
On the one hand, if you look a bit further than the posters that seem to have been created by hormonally supercharged 16-year olds, you’ll see a company that, whilst being an “evil corporate chain“, cares for its workers and generally does the right thing.
Compare this to the writings, videos and ads you find in the LDS Newsroom devoted to Prop 8.
I’ll take over the top sleazy advertising over hateful half-truths and whole lies any day.
