Aerie is owned by American Eagle Outfitters. For more details on Aerie’s social and environmental commitments, see the Remake Brand Directory. 

#PAYUP

4-30-21 – PayUp Fashion adds Aerie’s parent company, American Eagle Outfitters, to the Brand Tracker. The company never agreed to #PayUp. According to the Worker Rights Consortium, AEO imposed steep discounts on clothing already manufactured or in production. 

KEEP WORKERS SAFE

The Keep Workers Safe demand requires brands to ensure their garment workers’ financial and economic safety during the pandemic by signing onto the Severance Guarantee Fund, which creates a social safety net for laid-off workers; by contributing to direct relief for garment workers; and by protecting human rights, democracy, and the right to organize. It’s estimated the cost to ensure a social safety net for garment workers is just $.10 cents more per garment. And yet American Eagle Outfitters made no additional efforts to Keep Workers Safe during the pandemic, earning the brand a “NO” for Keep Workers Safe

GO TRANSPARENT

8-12-21 – Aerie’s parent company, American Eagle Outfitters, has not committed to The Transparency Pledge and, troublingly, it does not publicly disclose even a basic tier 1 cut-and-sew garment factory list. Tier 1 transparency is the absolute lowest bar of compliance in fashion and since AEO has yet to meet it, we have given them a “NO” for Go Transparent.

In addition to the above, to receive a “YES” for Action 3 on the PayUp Fashion Tracker, AEO must disclose its tier 2 (fabric mills), tier 3 (yarn and fiber mills) and tier 4 (raw materials) suppliers; disclose the wages of the lowest-earning workers at each factory and share audit and remediation reports publicly, and make these findings available to the garment workers in the audited factories.

SIGN ENFORCEABLE CONTRACTS

The Accord

American Eagle Outfitters (AE and Aerie) has signed onto the new enforceable Accord agreement on workplace safety, which we applaud. The Accord was devised in the wake of the Rana Plaza disaster in 2013, in which 1,134 garment makers were crushed to death in a garment factory collapse in Bangladesh. Today, the Accord is the industry standard for workplace safety agreements, with more than 150 brand signatories as of December of 2021. For signing on to the agreement, we’ve given AEO the designation of “Brand Meets Some Conditions” for meeting part of this demand. 

END STARVATION WAGES

American Eagle Outfitters (Aerie) has made no public commitment to pay living wages in its supply chain, nor can it demonstrate that the workers in its supply chain earn above poverty wages, earning it a “NO” for End Starvation Wages.

HELP PASS LAWS

The Garment Worker Protection Act

Aerie is a member of a trade association, the AAFA, that lobbied heavily against California’sGarment Worker Protection Act (SB62), a landmark bill that passed despite corporate opposition in 2021 and that aims to end wage theft in garment factories by holding brands jointly accountable. Our expectation is that companies will support and not lobby against laws like SB62 that strengthen brand accountability, earning Aerie a “NO” for Help Pass Laws.