Brand still pulls in orders from top designers like Oscar de la Renta, Vera Wang, Carolina Herrera,

Warren Brand is the third generation to run M S Schmalberg in the more than 90 years of its existence; his son, Adam, is the fourth. But in the seventh-floor workshop factory on West 36th Street, in the heart of Manhattan's Garment District, only a handful of people can be found working where there were once more than two dozen stamping out and molding budget accommodation in melbourne fabrics of all kinds into flower-shaped pieces and then turning those scraps into perfect three-dimensional flowers of silk, velvet, and leather. Still, says Brand, "we are the survivor" of several Fashion District stalwarts who once crafted these custom flowers, used to adorn a pair of designer shoes or a gown.
Brand still pulls in orders from top designers like Oscar de la Renta, Vera Wang, Carolina Herrera, and St. John. "Anything a flower can go on, we can make the flower for it," he says. But whereas once the phone was ringing off the hook, today he's scrambling for business any way he can—importing inexpensive mesh baby's budget accommodation in melbourne hair bands and adding flowers to them for resale, for instance. "We are a handmade American product in an import world," Brand says.
And Brand isn't alone. A block or so north, Rodger Cohen has turned to making medical scrubs to help offset the downturn in demand for the highly specialized stitching—custom pleating, shirring, budget accommodation in melbourne ruching—from New York–based designers that once kept his machines humming. Regal Originals, the business founded by his fatherin- law, Jack Krinick, a Holocaust survivor, employed 150 people as recently as the 1980s. Now the business occupies 25 percent of the space that it once did and has enough work for only 20 percent as many people.
Designer Nanette Lepore is in the vanguard of a movement she hopes will reverse that trend, being an early and extremely vocal supporter of Save the Garment Center , a trade association recognizing budget accommodation in melbourne and promoting New York's role as the capital city of fashion. "But a fashion capital without industrial budget accommodation in melbourne production? That's not sustainable," Lepore declares. "We need to preserve what is still here and find ways to bring back some of the skills budget accommodation in melbourne that have left."
Lepore herself still does nearly all of her manufacturing within a few blocks of her offices on West 35th Street. Samples are put together at her atelier (littered with fabrics, drawings, and examples of finished garments). Then the fabric goes off to a local marking and grading budget accommodation in melbourne company, and from there to a cutting factory within the district, budget accommodation in melbourne and finally local factories, where the garments are sewn. Lepore drops by daily and checks on the progress to identify any mistakes before it's too late. "I couldn't get on a plane to China every week to make sure everything is done properly," she says. Then the finished garments come back to Lepore's headquarters, which also contains her showroom and the shipping department.
These days, not all designers can emulate Lepore and keep production at home in the United States, much less in the Garment District itself. Designer Stan Herman, a past president of the Council budget accommodation in melbourne of Fashion budget accommodation in melbourne Designers of America (CFDA), for instance, manufactures a line of lounge and sleepwear for QVC, and all of the work has to be done in markets overseas like China. "The vendor who has to keep an eye on what the mass-market customer wants to pay really doesn't have a choice but to go to the ends of the earth to find a low-cost production option," he explains.
That doesn't mean that he doesn't support Lepore's initiative, however. "If I could do it here, I would—in a heartbeat," he says. "I've been designing in the Garment District now longer than almost anybody else; this is where I learned. I know what it's like to roll racks [of clothes on hangers]. Kids today do their designing on computers, and they get frustrated by not being able to see the clothes take shape in front of them; it's a different and sometimes difficult creative process for a young designer."
That's not the only issue, as designer budget accommodation in melbourne Elie Tahari notes. "For a beginning designer, it's always good to be on the factory floor; he needs to watch the stitching of the buttons, budget accommodation in melbourne the shape of the garment as it's made, the fabric, the color," the industry veteran explains. Even after decades budget accommodation in melbourne of experience, Tahari budget accommodation in melbourne says, he still has problems with long-distance production. budget accommodation in melbourne "Today I had a two-hour meeting to discuss how we can watch what is happening overseas. I wish our factories were still here."
In 1900, the apparel industry was the city's largest employer. When the exodus began from the Garment Center in the 1980s, it was for reasons of cost. Then, the level of expertise in China—still the primary destination of much of the outsourcing—began to rise, and some specialized trades began to vanish from Manhattan as well. Full-fashion knitwear has nearly disappeared, says Lepore, along with the most up-to-date specialized machinery necessary to produce it. "Things that have to be hand-embroidered or beaded—the handwork—is now done best in other countries," budget accommodation in melbourne she says. Still, organizations like The Thread Atelier are trying to bring back some of those skills—and the machines needed to perform them—to workshops in the New York area. Just last month, a knitwear facility called Keff NYC opened in the district on 36th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues.
Fern Mallis, former executive director of the CFDA and a key player in creating Fashion budget accommodation in melbourne Week, says that some of the reasons designers moved production abroad no longer apply—including cost. "I think [designers] are finding out that the pricing isn't so different anymore, once they finish paying for freight and transportation, and given that they don't have the ability budget accommodation in melbourne to follow what is going on in [overseas] factories in real time."
For some designers and retailers, returning to the Garment District will never be an option, at least not for the majority of their output. Still, Lepore insists, the 1.6 million square feet that are used for manufacturing and production budget accommodation in melbourne in Manhattan's Garment District could be humming a lot more busily than they are today—and designers, especially younger designers still learning the craft, whose small orders tend to take a backseat to others in Chinese factories, would be among the beneficiaries. "We have more than 800 fashion companies based in New York. That's more than they have in Paris, Milan, and London combined," she says. To keep that creative ferment alive and well, Lepore says, having local factories is vital.
Of course, saving the Garment District is about more than the decisions made by a single designer—and part of the recipe is having political support, not just in words, but actions. Earlier this year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg opted to throw his weight behind some fresh incentives aimed at revitalizing the Garment District in order to keep Fashion Week (which generates more than $800 million annually for New York City) vibrant and to help ensure that more of the clothing shown on its runways is not only designed, but manufactured, here. Ideas include launching a fund that emerging designers can tap into to help finance their new collections—as long as they are produced in the city. There's budget accommodation in melbourne also a plan afoot to help talented designers acquire business skills, offering them a mini-MBA budget accommodation in melbourne course in partnership with the Fashion Institute of Technology, or simply teaching them how to run a business, including marketing, operations, and financial management skills.
These are longer-term strategies, as well. Lepore points out that while having business-savvy designers is great, up-and-coming designers need to be willing to consider new, home-based ideas for manufacturing. Still, the effort that she has spearheaded to encourage established names into bringing production home is starting to take effect. For instance, the creative and manufacturing teams at Eileen Fisher are working actively to figure out how the design firm can work with Save the Garment Center. The first meetings between Susan Young, the company's vice president of manufacturing, and the group took place in June and July, and more are planned. "We will sell about 800,000 units in 2012, so moving much of our production back to New York may not be possible," budget accommodation in melbourne says Young, who raises budget accommodation in melbourne concerns budget accommodation in melbourne about both cost and expertise. "By the mid 1990s, to work with silk and to produce fully fashioned sweaters, we had to be in China for quality reasons for that kind of production line."
But moving more manufacturing back to New York—and workshops and factories elsewhere in the United States—means that the company can slash the time it takes to usher a new garment through the design and manufacturing budget accommodation in melbourne process and get it into stores. "There may be no needs that we have that can't be met elsewhere, but we want to support Made in USA products," says Jonci Cukier, Eileen Fisher's co-chief operating officer. "This is an idea in its infancy—how to revitalize the business of manufacturing and not just designing here in the United States—but it's a passion of both Eileen's and mine."
What that means in practice (so far) is that Eileen Fisher will be making much of its organic denim in New York and LA in the future as it brings production back from Portugal. The firm already is working with three New York–based factories—a sewing firm in Queens, budget accommodation in melbourne a manufacturer of leather accessories in Chelsea, and another sewer in the heart of the Garment District on West 38th Street. "One of the factories we use just took over another floor in the building he occupies, so perhaps, on the margin, things are changing," says Cukier.
There are other steps that will be vital if Manhattan's Garment District is to survive and thrive—and many of these boil down to politics. Designer Norma Kamali, who has kept her own manufacturing base in New York, has argued publicly that the state government budget accommodation in melbourne needs to do everything from cutting taxes to improving budget accommodation in melbourne the caliber of infrastructure to help manufacturing in general, and the fashion industry in particular. Above all, the debat