1,800 Job Openings in LA

American Apparel, in downtown Los Angeles, is firing about 1,800 immigrant employees -- more than a quarter of its workforce -- after a federal investigation turned up irregularities in the identity documents they had presented at hiring (i.e., Social Security and/or immigration documents) — probably because the documents were fake.



So will American Apparel be able to replace those workers?  Are American citizens interested in working for a company that "has been lauded by city officials and business leaders for paying well above the garment industry standard, offering health benefits and not long ago giving $18 million in stock to its workers"?  The company also has masseuses and massage chairs on the factory floor, dispensing 20-minute massages to sewing staff who needed them.



The pay is decent, there are benefits and bonuses, and occasional perks.  But one soon-to-be-terminated employee -- a top supervisor, said, “I think the Americans think that garment sewing is demeaning work.”



Geez, I don't!  If it weren't 3,000 miles away, I'd definitely take a job there over one at Wal-Mart, Old Navy or Starbucks. Wouldn't you?  If Americans (born here or born elsewhere but citizens now) need work, and a good company needs workers, will they apply for work in a garment factory?  What would that be like?



It might go like this:  American company offers decent, skilled labor jobs, with training, to Americans.  More Americans work, more Americans experience the satisfaction of making, more Americans respect the skills, craftsmanship and time that go into making, more Americans are willing to pay a little more for well-made goods (American, hopefully), and more American factories are created.  More American jobs.  And perhaps a new, respectful era begins for American industry.

Sewing in America (Part 5) - RIP NYC Fashion Capital?

There is an incredibly relevant article in today's New York Times, regarding the decline of the garment industry in NYC.


New York’s garment center, once the heart of an industry that employed hundreds of thousands of workers and produced most of the clothing in the United States, is in danger of extinction.


For decades, cheaper foreign competitors and rising rents forced many of the sewing and cutting rooms and the button and zipper shops that once thrived on the side streets south of Times Square to close, shrink or move as mass production shifted to China, India and Latin America.


Owners say they are caught in a vise between declining retail sales and landlords eager to find better-paying tenants.



Some city officials and industry leaders worry that if manufacturing is wiped out, many of the designers who bring so much luster to New York will leave, along with the city’s claim to be a fashion capital rivaling Paris and Milan. The damage would be undeniable, given that the industry’s two big annual events — Fashion Week in September and February — attract enormous numbers of visitors and generate hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity.



“If you don’t have production in the garment center, there would be no reason for designers and suppliers to cluster in the district,” said Barbara Blair Randall, executive director of the Fashion Center Business Improvement District. “We’re down to 9,000 jobs.”



But city officials say the industry has shrunk to a point where it could be reasonably consolidated in a few buildings, rather than several blocks. “It’s not mass production,” Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey said of the garment center. “Clearly, what’s occurring is much smaller and more high-end compared with the actual production that used to exist..."



It's a Catch-22: the factories are smaller, so the output capacity is smaller, so the orders are smaller. The work in these Garment District shops tends to be more high-end, intricate upscale designer clothing requiring finer craftsmanship. It's hard to say whether that's a cause or a symptom of the district's decline.



"Orders are more likely to be 3,000 or 4,000 pieces, not the production runs of 100,000 pairs of jeans that are now typically sent to..."



(Want to guess?)


"...China."

Sewing in America -- 2 Major Ideas (Part 3)

It's taken me a while to post again because I realize there are two separate ideas here:



A.) Sewing as a lost art (even mending stymies most people)

B.) Limited apparel manufacturing resources in the US



On the Subject of A (let's call it "Lost Arts"):

This Sunday's New York Times Magazine presented an interesting article about our nation's dwindling cooking abilities, and how women's lib, cooking/food lifestyle shows and the packaged food industry have turned eating into theater, cooking into sport, and diminished the daily activity of food preparation. "Weekday meals are hum drum, a drag to shop and prepare for after a long day, so let's nuke/order something and make a REAL meal on the weekend."



I think the same thing has happened to sewing:



The Women's Lib Effect:

I think for girls growing up in the 70's, sewing was old-fashioned, house-wifey, uncool, unliberated. It was a big deal when our district decided that boys AND girls would take Home Economics AND Wood Shop. Having the boys in Home Ec made the subjects at hand into comedy. The boys would goof around (egg tosses, anyone?) and when we were doing sewing projects, the boys would instigate "races" where they would floor the pedals and rev up the machines. The boys aren't completely to blame, though, because the girls happily joined in -- at least the girls who cared about being cool to the boys (which was most of us). Looking back, I feel so sorry for the Home Ec teachers. What they taught was being stigmatized right before their eyes.



I remember in the 90s, when I worked in an office, and a button popped off my jacket. I asked the other women (mostly in their 20s) if any of them had a needle and thread. They furrowed their brows and said they'd never even used a needle or thread. They'd never even sewed on a button. So what do you do when a button falls off? They told me they put it back in their closet and figure they'll get around to it (then throw it out in a few months), or wear it anyway. I described the idea of a Home Ec class and they giggled. I get the sense that when people profess their ignorance to threading a needle, it's a badge of honor that they are not Suzy Homemaker.



Cheap Clothes, Sold Cheap

Why make when you can buy? Why mend when you can buy? Clothing is cheap and disposable. In fairness, it would be a real drag to have to make every single thing you needed to wear, and to mend the heels of your socks when they wore thin, but if replacements were not so inexpensive easily available, wouldn't we do a LITTLE more? Of course the relative inexpensive price of the goods has a lot to do with Subject B (Limited US apparel manufacturing).



Creative Outlet versus Life Skill

Whereas the elevation of cooking to an art form bows to Julia Child and the Mario Batali, sewing has Project Runway and Etsy. Have you checked out the sewn goods on Etsy? They're amazing. Amazing and intimidating. Etsy and Project Runway celebrate the art of design and the craft of sewing, and elevate them to a point where all we want (or can, for that matter) do is admire.



So where should I go with this? Do I have a point of view on how or why to bring sewing back into the American mainstream? Not really. The Times article quotes Harry Balzer, a food-marketing research expert, who comes off as an amusing, crusty curmudgeon, on why peole need to get off their high horses about the Lost Arts. Just substitute "cooking a chicken" with "making a dress" (and the attendant preparations):



“Do you miss sewing or darning socks? I don’t think so... Here’s an analogy,” Balzer said. “A hundred years ago, chicken for dinner meant going out and catching, killing, plucking and gutting a chicken. Do you know anybody who still does that? It would be considered crazy! Well, that’s exactly how cooking will seem to your grandchildren: something people used to do when they had no other choice. Get over it.”



So yes, we do have more choices now. To sew and create. To mend or replace. And that's great; I like having choices. But I guess I would be less indignant if more people would just sew a button back on once in a while.



What do you think? Do you guys sew? Can you thread a needle and sew on a button? How important a skill is it?

Sewing in America (Part 2): That's Sew China

This is the second in a 5-part series on the state of sewing and manufacturing in America:


An incredible proportion of our goods (be they sewn, molded, assembled, etc.) are made in China. If you TRIED to avoid buying "Made in China" merchandise, you would have a very hard time indeed. Sara Bongiorni, a journalist in Baton Rouge, lived for a year avoiding the purchase of any products made in China. She wrote a book about it, "A Year Without Made in China: One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy," where, according to Publisher's Weekly, she tells "often funny, occasionally humiliating stories centering around her difficulty procuring sneakers, sunglasses, DVD players and toys for two young children and a skeptical husband."





To get a sense of how these kabillion products are produced, take a look at these truly awesome photoscapes by Canadian artist Edward Burtynsky. I've been rendered speechless by natural sights like the Grand Canyon and man-made architectural wonders in Europe, but when I saw Burtynsky's "Manufactured Landscapes," my mind was truly, truly boggled. I could not even imagine, or believe how big these factories are.







The output from just ONE day or work would probably fill every shelf of your local big box store. Imagine hundreds of megafactory complexes, operating 365 days a year.



What does this have to do with sewing?



That'll be covered in the next post. Have a great weekend, everybody.

Sewing in America (a 5-part series)

This is the first in an ongoing series of observations about the state of sewing in America. As many of you know, the Car Seat Poncho is manufactured right here in the USA, and I hope that I will always be able to say that. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that will still be possible 5, 10 or 20 years from now.




Fifty years ago, there were millions of factory jobs in this country -- skilled labor that built the middle class. And thirty years ago, middle and high school kids were learning how to make things, in wood shop or in home ec. Those classes were terrific laboratories for math, geometry, and creativity. Where are they now -- those jobs, those classes? Is it even possible to bring them back? And what will we do when/if they're gone?




PART 1: Keeping An American Brand in America




I breathed a big sigh of relief when I read that Hartmarx had received approval to sell itself to two American and British investor groups (link).




Britain's Emerisque Brands and SKNL North America have vowed to keep the company intact as a leading manufacturer of men's and women's suits. Hartmarx, the 120-year-old maker of Hickey Freeman and Hart Schaffner Marx brands, has outfitted generations of men in their "first day of work" suits, wedding tuxedos and retirement dinner jackets. Based in Illinois, they have made several suits for President Obama, including the one he wore at his inauguration.




This vow means that over 4,000 employees in Illinois, New York and Alabama get to keep their jobs, their homes, their healthcare (hopefully), their security. It also means that the art and craft of apparel manufacturing stays alive a little while longer in this country.




(Wells Fargo, HM's creditor, had wanted to liquidate its assets, dismiss its employees, and license the esteemed brand name to offshore manufacturers. Hmmm. That's not a very nice "thank you" to the American people for shelling out the $25 billion in federal aid that kept the bank afloat, is it? Quite arrogant, I'd say.)




What do you think?