American Apparel Goes Back to the Drawing Board, Ditches Models

So what do you do if you’re a company trying to crawl out of a pretty deep financial hole? Cut costs to start. For American Apparel, outsiders have suggested shuttering underperforming stores, but it looks like the creative department has started by turning up the raunch and reducing the number of models involved.

Instead of sultry hipster girls wearing lame hot pants and socks, American Apparel’s latest ads feature sultry hipster cartoon girls in various states of undress. {Copyranter via Stylelite}

The hosiery ad features butt-less tights that we’re assuming is a nod to Prince’s early sartorial choices (the ad is slightly purple), and an ad which ran in VICE… well, we guess American Apparel is selling merkins or eyebrow merkins now.

As controversial as some of their early ads were, we could see some segment of the population finding them appealing. These on the other hand… we’re not sure exactly what they’re selling, and we’re really not sure if anyone’s buying.