I know, one of my weaknesses is an insistence on covering the retail sector. But I have to do it. And I have to give a h/t to LoLo, Esq., for practically writing this one for me. Dov Charney, intrepid CEO of American Apparel, is well-known as a lech, but you’d think that taking a private-equity investment would calm him down a little bit, no?

No.

Lion Capital may want to revisit whether the free cash flow “generated by American Apparel over the next five years, even as it self-funds its own growth, should be more than enough to pay down all outstanding debt and allow for excess cash on the balance sheet” is also enough to fund the lawsuits inevitably coming down the 101:

American Apparel’s pervy madman CEO, Dov Charney, is demanding the firing of employees he deems unattractive and thus detrimental to the “AA aesthetic,” as he feels they may be hurting his bottom line.

Here’s the text of an email we received tonight from a pissed-off American Apparel store manager:

Our company holds weekly conference calls that every store manager world/nation wide are required to tune into. We discuss sales, which stores need displays, which items are doing well, etc.

Summer is supposed to be a great sales season for AA. Needless to say, with the state of the economy, sales haven’t been going so well. Dov usually gets on the conference calls and talks to people, but one week, he went on a huge tirade and made stores that weren’t doing well send in group photos. Why, you ask? He made store managers across the country take group photos of their employees so that he could personally judge people based on looks. He is tightening the AA ‘aesthetic,’ and anyone that he deems not good-looking enough to work there, is encouraged to be fired. This is blatant discrimination based on looks.

Dov personally judged each person in group photos that were sent in, and if you weren’t to his liking, then boy… watch out.

Now, if there’s really a secret deck floating around where Lion ordered Dov to tighten up the ranks to “all sexy people,” we’d love to see it. But we’re thinking this really sounds like a page out of Abercrombie’s book, and we all know how well that’s worked out for them recently.

Oh, and speaking of Dov Charney: I would not hit it. CEO… fire thyself?