Times change.
They really do.
And few places have seen more changes than New York City.
Here’s a big change: for more than a hundred years, New York City was the center of the nation’s garment industry.
It began in the late 1840s, when two drivers of economic growth — new machines and eager workers — came together there.
After fits and starts, through the work of several inventors, an easy-to-operate sewing machine had at last become available.
And, at the same time, the city was awash in immigrants needing work.
Among them were skilled tailors and seamstresses.
Clothing production began among families, including children, who did piecework in their tenement apartments in the city’s Lower East Side.
Some of the best early customers of New York clothing were Southern plantation owners.
They found purchasing slave clothing in New York was cheaper than requiring their enslaved labor to produce it themselves.
And some New York clothing producers catered to this market, advertising themselves as specialists in “Negro clothing.”
When the Civil War broke out, there was a sudden, huge demand for men’s clothing.
To meet this demand, producers agreed on a set of standardized sizes.
Before this, garments were made-to-measure.
Production shifted from home workshops to large lofts in Midtown.
And producers began to specialize in various segments of garment production and sales.
There were fabric manufacturers and importers, designers, pattern makers, button and trim makers, lace makers, tailors, seamstresses, pressers, clothing wholesalers…
…and delivery people who pushed clothing racks and fabric bundles from place to place on the city’s side streets and sidewalks.
Here’s an example of specialization: from the 1950s to the 1970s, the firm Creators Studios marketed ready-to-wear clothing designs — thousands of them — to clothing manufacturers across the country.
The New York garment industry began to fade after World War II.
Casual clothing, initially called ‘sportswear,’ became popular and tailored, fitted clothing lost market share.
Casual clothes were simpler and could be produced without specialty fabric cutters and tailors.
The garment industry decline accelerated in the 1980s when low-cost overseas labor became available.
So, here we are, wearing clothing made in Vietnam and Bangladesh.
Change can be good, and maybe this is one of them.
But I can’t help but think that something was lost when America stopped making its own clothes.
******************************
I’ll see you tomorrow.
— Brenda
Share this post