American Apparel released a statement today to address recent accusations about their hiring practices.

Here’s the gist:

American Apparel does not hire or retain applicants based on ‘beauty.’ Our main priority is finding people with a strong sense of style who can inspire customers as they make selections from our extensive line. This is an integral part of the job, and we look for people who will enjoy it as a creative outlet. It has never been the policy of American Apparel, as some blogs claim, to fire employees who are not “good looking” or any of the other accusations implied by the anonymous or unverified third party sources. The company legitimately reviews current photographs of job applications and employees to consider their sense of style and the way in which they present themselves. Through personal interviews, we evaluate whether they possess the skills and personality required to successfully sell our products. This is a standard practice among fashion-forward retailers.

If you want to talk to the man himself, you can email the company’s Founder and CEO at dov@americanapparel.net. If he answers, let us know, it’ll be like getting an email from Steve Jobs but maybe hairier?

Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan has been looking into the hiring practices of American Apparel these last couple days that find, of course, they discriminate worse than your high school’s cheerleading squad. Every new employee prospect is photographed from top down and sent up the chain of command.

Also, from a leaked document sent to Gawker, let’s get to know American Apparel’s “New Standard” of fashion.

The “New Standard” is described in a company document as “Classy-Vintage-Chique-Late 80′s-Early 90′s-Ralph Lauren-Vogue-Nautical-High end brand.” What the hell is that? Well I’ll tell you for shoes it most certainly isn’t Uggs, winter boots, flip-flops, gladiators, converses, vans, keds, moccasins, or fucking Dock Martins. It is vintage shoes, heels, booties, boat shoes, sperry’s, and white Keds, “as long as they’re impeccably clean.” Keep your dirty-ass Keds off of AA’s property!

Anybody work at the AA on North 6th? We’ve heard some shady things over there from years past, would love to update our mental catalogue.

I was already sitting at my computer on Monday when I “sat down” with Tao Lin (blog, twitter), author of the recently released Shoplifting From American Apparel, to have a little gchat about being fucked, Dan Brown’s new book, and his new life as an internet t-shirt model.

I volunteered that we’d keep this interview embargoed until next week sometime, but am posting it now so the New York Times will see they’re not the only ones breaking those things these days.

Here, have a look at what we talked about!

An Interview with Tao Lin, author of Shoplifting From American Apparel

me: hello

tao: hi

me: shall we chat?

tao: yes

(No, that’s not it! There’s more! After the jump…)

(more…)