Black to the future: Getting Biblical at American Apparel

Picture the 1960s advertising. Cigarette boxes danced and kids colored with “Flesh” crayons straight from the Crayola Caucasian collection — assuming you were either anemic or came from Flekkefjord.

And then, alevai!, PC pummeled in. Cigarettes were out and Crayola got the memo. “Flesh” was renamed “Peach” in 1962, “Indian Red” eventually became “Chestnut,” and even “Prussian Blue” was turned to “Midnight Blue” in case Kaisers started goose-stepping during the Cold War.

We’ve come a long way … or have we?

Recently, Dov Charney’s Am-erican Apparel introduced a kewl new addition: A nail polish collection free of formaldehyde, but clearly not free of the company’s signature chutzpah: The color? Black. The name? “Hassid.”

This offense is mild by contemporary standards, and most tweens who feel the need to “Go Goth” don’t know Hassid from birdseed. But Jews know. And yes, we actually buy nail polish! As someone with a four-year-old daughter who has recently taken a particular shine to the shiny stuff, this is something about which I can speak.

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American Apparel founder and CEO Dov Charney, born a Jewish Canadian in 1969 who firmly believed in Yankee Doodle Dandy U.S. fashion, is one of the most colorful, controversial, successful and “out there” entrepreneurs in the world. He started the company in 1989 at age 20, and makes clothes in the heartland of the U.S. — downtown L.A. Moreover, the company proudly boasts that each employee gets health benefits and incentives.

Charney, who is himself Jewish (not that you can hide it with a name like Dov), does have a particular relationship to the Hassids. His company was successfully sued for $5 million by another Israelite, Woody Allen, over a billboard of his Annie Hall character in the famous Hasidic garb dream sequence.

How ironic then, that Charney should use the term “Hassid,” especially when his company was under fire from critics for using suggestive Polaroid photo-billboard ads capturing young (very young looking) models in moments of vulnerable candor.But then, this was a boy whose first venture, according to the New York Times by Laura Holson, was selling rainwater he had collected in mayonnaise jars to his neighbors.

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Despite Charney using the term “Hassid,” his marketing is far from kosher. The term Hassid means “piety” or “loving-kindness,” and has become synonymous with a dress style known as tzniut, loosely translated as “modesty.” Whilst contemporary culture has convinced us all to become obsessed with size, complexion, fashion (and nail polish), a mystical approach to fashion shows that clothes don’t just cover the external self but that they also reveal the inner self.

The Hebrew word for “world” (olam) is etymologically related to the same root as “hidden” (ne’elam). When discussing why the divine is not more obviously manifest in the world, the Talmud notes “that G-d wears the world like a garment.”

I would argue to Dov that whilst modest clothing may cost more to produce, it does produce benefits by creating a private space without fear from external objectification where we can truly be our true self.

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In a world where the human body has been reduced to tacky billboards, have we have not only become overexposed, but have we gone “black” to the future?

Rabbi Simcha Weinstein, an internationally known best-selling author whose first book, “Up, Up and Oy Vey!” received the Benjamin Franklin Award, has been profiled in leading publications including The New York Times, The Miami Herald and The London Guardian.

He was recently voted New York’s Hippest Rabbi by PBS Channel 13. He chairs the Religious Affairs Committee at Pratt Institute. His forthcoming book is “The Case for Children: Why Parenthood Makes Your World Better.”