So isn’t Dov Charney kind of a creep?

Not really, not to me. A creep wants to hurt you, to make you uncomfortable. Dov is in his own world, and it’s one without a lot of boundaries—but I don’t think he wants to hurt people. That said, he isn’t like anyone else I’ve met. He takes a lot of energy.

How did you come up with the idea for the story?
My editor, Bill Tonelli, saw the ad in the New York Times and thought it was interesting. At first I didn’t want to write about the company because everyone has written the “Dov Charney-is-a-sex-fiend” story, and I thought that would be boring. But then when I went downtown and talked to some of the people working there, saw how afraid they were, saw what a big impact a raid could have on them—I realized it was way beyond sex. That this was a company that was vulnerable to a new federal mandate, and that the effects of it were tangible. People were afraid, people were paranoid. And it seemed important.

What movie character does Dov Charney remind you of?
Willy Wonka. I thought about it all the time when I was down there—a successful factory owner who is alienated from society because he loves his product too much. It’s Dov.

What was the hardest part of doing this story?
I guess balancing my desire to get a good story and to tell it as completely as possible and, at the same time, not endanger my subject. Charney and the people who work for him are living in a state of fear of a crackdown, and while I wanted to tell that story, I didn’t want to make life any harder [for the workers].