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And besides, he doesn’t think it matters to his customers where and how their clothes are made. "It’s no more than icing on the cake," Charney insists. "Who cares if it’s sweatshop-free? Even our own employees buy clothing made in China."

It’s this attitude that really pisses off the left. "I think his out-and-out defiance and disrespect for the whole social-justice tradition will eventually bite him in the ass," says Chris Mackin, one of multiple CEOs who tried to save the now-defunct sweatshop-free TeamX, a Los Angeles factory not only staffed by unionized workers, but co-owned by them. "He resisted a union drive. It’s this cult of personality in corporate America that somehow, if your personality is large enough and daring enough, you will exceed any of the needs or demands for fairness or justice that came before you because you’re so enlightened. That’s the kind of narcissism that I think is just ridiculous."

For better or worse, though, Charney must be on to something: American Apparel has seen tremendous growth in the past five years. Projected figures for 2004 had the company grossing $150 million, and its retail stores have multiplied exponentially. And as American Apparel expands overseas, Charney promises not to pay any of his employees less than the US federal minimum wage.

at His DESK in Waltham, Adam Neiman points to a world map dotted with thumbtacks representing the retail stores that carry his brand. Pinned up are color printouts of seven new designs incorporating the No Sweat logo and the Rosie the Riveter emblem. They’re hipper than anything No Sweat has previously sold. "We’ve had a lot of bands that have been asking for stuff they could wear on stage," Neiman says of the motivation behind the redesigns. "There was this band that did Total, ah, is it Total Live?"

"Total Request Live," mumbles No Sweat’s chief operating officer, Anne O’Loughlin, a 2002 Tufts grad.

"Total Request Live, thank you," says Neiman. "This is about the gazillionth time I’ve had to ask. It was this band Gratitude. They’re, um," he pauses, as if trying to remember the word, "an emo band. This is this guy’s five-second break on MTV, and during these five seconds, he’s going" — Neiman frantically points at his shirt, mouthing "no sweat."

Neiman calls Dov Charney’s managerial method the "righteous dude with the ponytail" model. It’s the same anti-union attitude, he says, that’s proffered by Ben & Jerry’s and Whole Foods. " ‘We don’t need unions — we’ve got ponytails. We’re righteous dudes. Who needs a contract?’ "

Neiman contends this approach is ultimately bad for the worker. "What we’re saying is that the righteous dude in the ponytail is no substitute for a union contract," he says. "People die. People get older. People sell out. They get bought out. Things happen. Companies pass through the entrepreneurial phase, and then the management comes in and the bean counters come in, and the first thing they do is start squeezing the human beings. That’s just inevitable if there’s not a contract. If you’re righteous, you’re righteous enough to put it in writing."

There’s another major caveat with the virtuous-employer shtick, Neiman says. "The other problem with that righteous-dude model is that [it suggests] the best solution to all workers’ problems is to find a cool boss. That’s just not really an option for most of us."

For his part, Charney insists American Apparel workers didn’t actually want to unionize, but that they’d been pressured into it by union reps. "You can see me supporting unions in many circumstances. But it’s not for management to promote a union. You tell me [of] one CEO in the world that says, ‘Union, yes! I want a union! I don’t want to deal with my employees directly. I’d rather go through a third party with little-to-mediocre quality of negotiators; I want to negotiate through them. That’s the path of efficiency for me.’ No way. That’s why we don’t outsource — we want to have a direct connection to the workers."

The bottom line, says Charney, is that he just doesn’t think unions are necessary for his employees. "What about the fact that you can knock on the boss’s car window and he’ll roll it down and hear your story? Or that only one person removed from any worker, or two people removed, have my cell number? Or that you can say ‘Fuck you’ to me and you’re probably not going to get fired?

"For anybody that claims we frustrated the union, come visit the workers or shut your mouth," he adds. "Is it a utopia? No. You’re working on a sewing machine — it’s hard work. Is it ideal? No, we’re not claiming it’s ideal. We’re making the best of it."

And Charney has some choice words for Adam Neiman. "No Sweat — boring! That guy from Massachusetts — c’mon, dude, how many panties has he sold? How many children were born from his shit?" By Charney’s standards, the Indonesian factory workers producing No Sweat sneakers don’t exactly have it made. "Those workers earn less than a buck an hour. It’s on his own Web site. He says they’re making more than the minimum wage in that country. But it’s like 70 cents an hour; that’s not sweatshop-free to me. It’s a sweatshop operation, No Sweat," Charney laughs. "At least we can say at American Apparel that the workers earn $26-, $28-, sometimes $35,000 a year. What does one worker get in Indonesia for 70 cents a day? A shack?"

Neiman is the first to admit his motives aren’t purely altruistic. Like Charney, he’s making a buck in a system that oppresses others. And if he did ever manage to convince a monolithic brand like Nike to change its foul ways, that wouldn’t necessarily spell success for his own company. "If we can be perceived as having been instrumental in bringing this change about, I’m reasonably confident that we could hold on to the half-a-point of market share of progressive consumers," Neiman says. "[But] is it possible that we could make ourselves obsolete and cease to have a reason to exist? Yeah."

Camille Dodero can be reached at cdodero[a]phx.com