The pictures told the story. At one point in Kate Flannery’s American Apparel memoir, she receives a series of photos for store display that depict a girl she’d recently hired as a high schooler, posing provocatively for the company’s 37-year-old male leader. The teenager was seemingly becoming a “Dov girl,” one of the employees who shared Dov Charney’s bed.

For consumers who didn’t know the photo subjects personally, American Apparel’s problematic yet iconic ads told a different story. They saw a clean and sexy look (Charney couldn’t abide tattoos or facial piercings) for the 2000s, a retro romp they could join with a clean conscience. The products were made in the U.S.A., after all.

Strip Tees is both a direct indictment of Charney’s culture and an indirect critique of the broader forces that allowed it to flourish.