American Apparel just issued its first-quarter financial report, and the news ain’t good. The company’s shares have plunged 41 percent in value, and unless business picks up significantly they’re in danger of defaulting on an operating loan taken out last year. In today’s wintry economic climate, this would merit something between a “meh” and a slightly more sympathetic “meh,” except for two things: 1) AA’s nimbus of hipster cool, annoying per se and less justified than anything this side of the hipster rep of Pabst Blue Ribbon; and 2) the fact that Dov Charney, the company’s “charismatic” CEO, is like some skeevy Old Navy knockoff of Terry Richardson. Admittedly, the guy has a talent for speaking in total stonewalling denialese:

“’It’s so silly — we’re a flourishing, growing company…. Our company in the past has been through these types of issues before, and it’s never presented us with any particular difficulties in running our business,’ he said in a call with analysts.”

This virtually defines whistling past the graveyard. Nobody wants to see anyone (except Dov Charney) lose their job, but it would be sweet, sweet schadenfreude if AA went belly up and their erstwhile clientele were forced to discover the previously unnoticed ironic virtues of apparel from Wal-Mart and Target. And the day Blue Light Specials become a hipster fashion statement, I’ll be laughing my starving, impoverished ass off.