Designers push for made in NYC fashion…
“If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere,” sang Frank Sinatra about New York City. He didn’t understand he was crooning about garments.
The Big Apple is once again turning into a hub for fashion manufacturing, with pink carpet royalty like designer Christian Siriano insisting that their ultra-glam robes — as seen on celebs like Zendaya, Celine Dion and even Oprah — get made in Manhattan.
That’s a big leap for fashion, which has misplaced practically 97% of its American industry to abroad operations, taking hundreds of thousands of jobs with it.
But major designers like Thom Browne and Ralph Lauren are investing back into expert US fashion staff, making some — or, in Siriano’s case, all — of their garments in the Empire State.
Designer Christian Siriano and model Coco Rocha in his Mercer Street studio. Sara Kerens
“We’ve been doing it right here in the city for almost 20 years,” Siriano told The Post. “If you see a dress on my runway, it didn’t come from a factory overseas. We literally made it back there,” he says, pointing to the satin-crammed workroom of his Mercer Street studio.
“We live in New York. And we live for New York!”
But he’s half of a small but growing group of New York designers who manufacture their items in Manhattan, Brooklyn or Queens — even as inflation, tariffs and materials prices make it more costly than ever to make garments in town that once outlined global fashion.
Siriano posing in NYC with some of his designs. Sara Kerens
“All the customers and the [celebrity] clients, they really love that the dress comes from New York,” said the “Project Runway” host. “They feel like they’re getting such a special, unique thing. Even if it’s a really basic, simple, great dress, when it’s made here, it feels like it’s worth so much more.”
“We’re not outsourcing our style to three other countries, you know? We’re not gonna ship something around the world just to get a zipper sewn on. It’s local, and we’re proud of that,” he added.
“People dream of looking like they have an amazing New York life,” said Siriano. “Well, the way to do that is by buying New York clothes.”
Coco Rocha in a Siriano robe made in New York. Getty Images for Christian Siriano
At the height of New York’s fashion energy from the Twenties to the Nineteen Sixties, town’s well-known midtown Garment District made practically 95% of America’s garments, with over 1 million metropolis dwellers employed as seamstresses, sample cutters and meeting linemen.
As town teemed with immigrants from Italy, Russia, Germany and latest arrivals from the American South and Puerto Rico, the Garment District fostered teamwork and group among expert staff, regardless of origin — even if no one’s co-workers spoke the same language.
And in the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties, these staff’ experience helped labels like Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan and Oscar de la Renta turn into iconic American enterprises.
The late Oscar de la Renta (shown right here with Karlie Kloss) saved clothes manufacturing local. Several of his former tailors now work at Siriano’s atelier. WireImage
But soon, cheaper choices arose abroad — and fast fashion giants like Temu started making plastic-y dupes of Hailey Bieber’s tightest tank tops, then promoting them for $5 each.
Now, even though over 900 fashion manufacturers are based in the Big Apple, 99% of them manufacture abroad, according to the global watchdog publication Sourcing Journal.
Some luxurious labels import their leather-based boots and cashmere crewnecks from tiny artisan workshops in Italy and Mongolia, but most retailers are hauling transport containers full of cheap-o crap from unregulated factories overseas.
Zendaya in a Siriano robe made in New York City. WireImage
That’s because when it comes down to it, making garments in New York — anyplace in America, actually — prices more, particularly now. Nobody making a costume on Seventh Avenue can promote it for $7 like Shein… or even for $40 like Uniqlo.
But that, too, is likely to be altering — at least a little.
In January, the Council of American Fashion Designers (CFDA) and Ralph Lauren launched the U.S. Fashion Manufacturing Fund, which guarantees real money infusions for designers wanting to create an American-made assortment.
There’s also the CFDA x NY Forward Grant Fund for Garment District factories that need gear upgrades.
But even without those money infusions, a small, cussed cluster of Gotham glamour junkies is doing it the laborious method: sketching and stitching their designs between subway rides.
Brooklyn designer Aisling Camps has three looms in her DUMBO studio.
“Everyone used to know someone — an uncle, a family friend, an older neighbor — who had worked in the Garment District,” said Batsheva Hay, a native of Kew Gardens who began her namesake line in 2016, after ditching life as a company lawyer.
“Now, I tell people I make my clothes in town… They look at me like I’m high.”
Hay’s prairie-punk vibe has been embraced by worldwide fashion babes like Natalie Portman, Celine Dion and Chloe Fineman. But her connection to New York’s “fashion history” retains her making seems to be on twenty eighth Street — that and the fact that, as a mom of two, she desires to work close to home.
“People are like, ‘You can go to India for a month and get everything made so much easier,’” she said. “But my kids are here. My life is here. And I want to support other people whose lives are here, too.”
Hay’s swishy clothes price about $300 retail. (Not horrible, but not Zara’s $60 staples, either.) She retains prices down by utilizing “deadstock” cloth — reams of cool prints from the Nineteen Seventies, ’80s and ’90s that she buys from low cost warehouses or shutting-down factories. She’s also gained small awards just like the Fashion Trust US prize to help her along.
Fashion designer Batsheva Hay in midtown Manhattan. Alexei Hay
“I don’t just want to make something on a Pinterest board and send it out for other people in another country to make my dreams come true,” she added. “There’s no romance in that. New York has the heart.”When Brooklyn-based knitwear designer Aisling Camps launched her own line after graduating from Columbia University, she schlepped three looms into her DUMBO studio. “Everyone in Italy and France goes on vacation for two months in the summer,” Camps told The Post.
“If I didn’t make these clothes myself, I’d have to wait six months. And by then, people would want something different!” This summer time, Camps was nominated for her first CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund Award, which acknowledges extraordinary skills in town. “I knit the clothes I showed Vogue myself,” she said.
For those without looming deadlines, designers say there are still tiny but mighty Garment District hubs like Joanna Design Source, Steinlauf and Stoller, International Pleating and the New York Embroidery Studio — all within a few blocks of each other in midtown.
Ariana Grande, Elle Fanning, Bad Bunny and “Heated Rivalry” star Hudson Williams have all worn items from The Creatory, a manufacturing hub on West thirty ninth Street that’s used by Gen Z fashion model Tanner Fletcher.
“When we had a week to make five Met Gala outfits, we did it with them,” says designer Fletcher Kassell, who runs the label with co-creator Tanner Richie.
“New York gets it done.”
Trust is also a big issue when it comes to making New York garments, Kassell told The Post.
“We can go into the manufacturing unit ourselves and keep concerned because they’re just down the road.
If you’re shopping for one thing from us, we would like it to be from us, not somebody we’ve never met!”
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