THIS IS A REQUIEM for your hoodie. American Apparel has filed for bankruptcy, and while that doesn't mean they're gone gone, the oft-derided, and even more frequently frequented clothing outpost is going to close a bunch of its storefronts. Whatever the future holds for American Apparel, its zeitgeist reign is over. It's sad that it's over, too, in the way that it's sad that time passes. American Apparel was the brick and mortar of our generation. And now that iTunes and Amazon are the definitive retailers, it means less and less to be the "brick and mortar of our generation." (Not that it ever meant anything because I just made it up, but IT WAS THE BRICK AND MORTAR OF OUR GENERATION.)

It was the rare store that meant more culturally than it did as an actual commercial enterprise. American Apparel was the official uniform supplier for people who really, really wanted to do coke and listen to whatever Pitchfork was rubbing up against, and it was the official uniform supplier for the people who wanted to fuck those people.

Fuck was the main thing American Apparel trafficked in, for better or much, much worse. They were fuck peddlers, from former CEO Dov Charney's godawful loins on down.

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