One of the biggest fashion topics of discussion this year (and the past few years) was American Apparel and its controversy-laden founder and CEO Dov Charney. Since January, Dov and his company have been through a lot. On the controversy end, they’ve showed pubes and boobs in their steadfastly NSFW ad campaigns, faced several very public sexual harassment accusations, held a plus-size modeling competition with a messy outcome and lost an employee to an industrial knitting machine, to name a few of the stories we can recall. In terms of business, they’ve come within inches of bankruptcy, received a $15 million cash injection from a group of Canadian investors, and announced a few efforts to get back on track like launching denim, selling through eBay and Bloomingdale’s and offering third-party merchandise.

While we’ve all heard about AA’s downtown L.A. factory, great wages, and vertically integrated business model, we’re still left with questions about why they’ve struggled so much and what really goes on inside that company–many of which are finally answered in an in-depth piece in the latest issue of fashion glossy Flaunt. Matthew Bedard visited Charney both in Toronto for a company event and AA’s L.A. digs and sheds a light on the company’s most prevalent issues, including the sexual harassment allegations, financial problems and new plans, manufacturing in the U.S. and more. Click through for the most interesting things we learned (and the most incendiary things Charney said).

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