Yes, “Made in New York” Clothing Is Still a Thing

Over the past 35 years, Pauline Lock has watched as both New York’s famous Garment District and the industry that once defined it changed shape. “When I started, a lot of clothes were still made in the USA, and there were hundreds of factories in Lower Manhattan,” she says. At its mid-century peak, the Garment District produced around 80 percent of domestic clothing; by the 1990s, that number had fallen sharply as production moved overseas and real estate prices skyrocketed. “If we don’t make an effort to preserve what we have left,” Lock says, “this will all disappear.” 

Lock runs InStyle USA, a garment factory that she describes as “a 10,000-square-foot unicorn.” Part of the way she takes action to keep the business alive is by working with small, independent designers from New York. “I think of our relationships like this,” Lock says: “I’m investing my time to help them grow their business, so hopefully when their business grows, they’re taking us with them.” And what these designers create takes time, she adds, laughing. “They’re producing on a tiny scale, but since their pieces are more unique and complex, we can make thousands of pants for other brands in the same time it takes us to produce 50 of theirs.” 

The New York designers Lock speaks of belong to a tight-knit group committed to handling everything locally, from sourcing fabric and buttons to sampling and production. Working across the Garment District from different neighborhoods, they sustain a human-scale fashion ecosystem of weavers, cutters, sewers, screen printers, trimmers and small vendors. It’s less defined by global competition than by mutual support, less by order minimums than by personal connections. 

“In fashion school, we were told to expect the industry to be gatekept and territorial,” says Kate Walz, who runs her eponymous label from her studio in Greenpoint and often works with Drew Dembs at Yvonne’s Studio on 38th Street. “I feel really lucky to have landed in a circle that’s unlike that in many ways.” 

Nick Williams, one-half of buzzy Small Talk Studio, which also does production with Dembs, shares a similar experience: “When I moved to New York around seven years ago, I expected it would be a cutthroat environment trying to run a small label here. I’ve been proved so thoroughly wrong.”

Their circle consists of roughly a dozen designers moving through overlapping friend groups across New York, sharing resources, doing pop-ups together, and regularly crossing paths. A key meeting spot is Colbo, the store-and-hang founded in 2019 by Tal Silberstein and Eldar Hadad, where many of them are or have been stocked. Located on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side, it sits a short subway ride from the Garment District, where its in-house line of relaxed, brown-hued clothes gets made.  

Mark Clarke, the soft-spoken designer behind Archie, was with Silberstein when he first visited the space after signing the lease. At Colbo, Clarke met Walz, as well as Williams and Phil Ayers of Small Talk Studio. Williams and Ayers are good friends with Cole Star of Csillag, who is connected to several others in the scene: he interned at Battenwear with Brandon Portelli of Randy’s Garments and met Connor McKnight — who lives close to Clarke and Ayers in Bed-Stuy — while they were both working for Bode. 

There isn’t a common aesthetic that connects them. Colbo’s earth tones feel distant from Small Talk’s bold colors and graphics, just as Kate Walz’s technical dresses and Connor McKnight’s utilitarian tailoring sit apart from Csillag’s luxury shirting or Archie’s tweaked Americana. Not that it matters. If anything, the diversity is what allows them to work so closely together. “We are all doing very focused and distinguishable work,” Star says, “so there’s not this competitive fear in helping each other out.” 

Besides, they all know that by exchanging contacts, they help keep local vendors in business. “The ecosystem is a lot smaller than it was even when I moved here a decade ago,” says Star, who trained at Martin Greenfield, the late Brooklyn-based master tailor, and still works out of its facility when he’s in town. “Now that many of them are retiring or closing,” he continues, “it has become evident that it’s essential to share the network to keep them busy.” 

What Clarke, who works from a studio in Midtown Manhattan, values most about the Garment District is its everyday sense of community. “Paul and Cari at Create-A-Marker, John in the back of Pacific Trimmings, Leo with UPS — I’ve been working with them and many other good people for years.” If that sounds mundane, it matters all the more in a world where, Clarke says, “shared experiences like these are often forgotten, devalued or relegated to apparatus.” 

Close personal relationships are central to how these designers work, too. “If I’m not making something myself,” says McKnight, “I prefer to be present for the process. I often adjust and change my mind as I go, so it’s important that I can communicate freely with my manufacturers.” McKnight, whom fashion critic Rachel Tashjian once called the “menswear star of New York Fashion Week,” values that same kind of face-to-face contact with his customers: taking a break from wholesale, he has recently been selling his leather bags from a sidewalk setup in Lower Manhattan. 

It’s not easy to establish working relationships in the Garment District. The chaotic, less-than-one-square-mile area retains an old-New-York feel in that, Clarke explains, “it can be quite nebulous and hard to pin down. Businesses frequently change shape and location, and I still hear of new manufacturers or suppliers that have been around forever, just sitting outside my purview.” That’s why trusted recommendations and informal introductions carry real weight. “When I find someone doing great work with competitive pricing,” Star says, “I’m very happy to put my friends in touch with them.” 

When asked whether this group of niche labels matters to the future of InStyle USA and New York’s Garment District at large, Lock immediately replies: “A hundred percent. It’s not just about producing here, it’s about wanting to produce here, choosing to stay here. If they do, I’ll know that when they grow, we grow.” 

Lock, whose clients also include Ralph Lauren and The Row, points to Small Talk Studio as an example. The label began as a project making screen-printed tees and one-of-a-kind custom pieces, often featuring hand-painted graphics. A collaboration with the late Virgil Abloh helped bring it to wider attention. Today, it has around 20 stockists worldwide, including several Dover Street Market locations, carrying its bold, heavily embellished clothes inspired by workwear and sportswear. 

Small Talk isn’t just made from start to finish in New York, says Williams — it wouldn’t exist without it. “Neither of us is trained formally in fashion. We owe so much to the people in the Garment District, who were here long before us and have been incredibly generous in sharing their knowledge.”