Collect From Quality American Made Brands While You Can

They're dying by the day...

Over the last few weeks, small American-made brands (and a few Canadian ones) have been closing at a steady pace. Eight mills have closed in the U.S. since September, and US cotton production is at a 140 year low — and there’s no end in sight. Most of these smaller brands closing won’t make the news and will barely register in the traditional national statistics. This article from the Washington Post during the pandemic noted how thousands of small businesses died during the pandemic and went largely unaccounted for. I wrote about whether we were witnessing the death of the independent brand last year. Sadly, this piece has become rather prescient.

Sure, less than three percent of our clothing is made in the U.S. today. Individually these brands are small, but it’s what this means at the collective macro level that matters. The only true sustainable fashion is quality fashion — and that’s getting harder to create as a brand and harder to find as a consumer. 

Many of the responsibly minded brands that have closed their doors recently only launched over the last 10-15 years — most likely in response to the same trends that prompted me to launch Senza Tempo. I imagine these other founders were likely tired of poor-quality clothing and wanted to be a part of a movement to reverse the trend toward poorer quality that started when NAFTA/the WTO agreements were signed and brands moved production offshore creating the ongoing race to the bottom which only accelerated after the financial crisis. 

The rhetoric around wanting to shop more responsibly or sustainably has never been more prevalent, yet the data shows that consumers are doing exactly the opposite. 

In addition to the American-made brands and mills closing, a 200-year-old mill in Switzerland that makes some of the finest cotton textiles (if not THE FINEST) in the world announced it would be closing a couple of weeks ago (you can find my comments on this closure to Apparel Insider here and Vogue Business here as this is one of my suppliers.) This mill makes a classic ultra-high-quality classic cotton birdseye pique - shirting material that will last a lifetime with proper care. The shirts and shirt dress I make using this fabric will be collector's items one day. I spent years looking for the best fabric. Later this year it will be no more. 

Quality fashion is the only sustainable fashion. While some might argue quality is subjective, there are observable, physical characteristics to assess quality some of which I wrote about in this piece many years ago on Sustainable Fashion Myths. It’s quality that keeps your clothing in rotation in your closet (or someone else's) and out of the landfill. 

While I run a luxury brand (which was more about keeping investors out of my business) — quality shouldn’t be a luxury good. I, too, want to buy cotton tee shirts that will last ten years the way they did until the early aughts. The fact that we now perceive any quality made product as a luxury good speaks to how far our standards have fallen. The way I construct my clothing at Senza Tempo was standard construction in decades past.

Christina Binkley noted in her piece for Vogue Business: “For more than a century, hundreds of Swiss mills — many of them in the Appenzell region centred around Saint Gallen — wove long-fibre Egyptian cotton into fabric, then sent it to factories that dyed, treated, printed and otherwise finished the luxury fabrics using chemical processes that met Swiss ecological and labour standards for clean water and air, and relatively high living standards; some of the most stringent requirements in the world in a nation bent on meeting its pledge to cut carbon production by 50 percent by 2030 from 1990 levels.” 

Real change and real sustainability will come at a not-so-insignificant cost. It’s why clothing used to be relatively more expensive and much better made.

The Swiss cotton I sourced from Cilander was Swiss+ certified cotton. That certification ensured the cotton was extra long staple and the top 1% of quality produced — characteristics scientific research has shown to be 40% stronger than standard cotton (note: Supima cotton is also extra-long staple cotton.) These are the types of certifications that will help create a more sustainable industry. Reminder I’ve written extensively on what makes something a quality item - check out the Senza Tempo Journal or follow me on Instagram where there are saved stories and regular posts on what to look for when shopping for quality. These days, one of the key things I try to find is who owns the brand. The smaller the company and more closely held, the better the quality — this is true for clothes, dishes, beauty — just about any consumer product. My December email from Senza Tempo listed some of my favorite small brands.

The problem with the dominant sustainability narrative is that most of these certifications do not assess and will make no difference to a product's longevity - never mind that they are unregulated despite their official sounding names. I’ve been on this soapbox for years as those who follow me on X/Twitter know, but it’s great to see that others are finally coming around to what is glaringly obvious. 

Again, quality fashion is sustainable fashion. 

It's not a change in the certification standards that’s led to the current state of the apparel industry — so why are certifications from brand-level B-corps to various supply chain certifications always presented as the solution?

What’s especially notable about Swiss production methods is they don’t outsource the greening of their production process to suppliers who can’t afford to make the changes — as is the standard operating procedure in the apparel industry today. 

Entire NGOs exist to help brands create the appearance that brands are cleaning up their supply chain. One of the biggest names in this space “consults” and advises the suppliers on how to green up their production methods. Advice the suppliers can in no way afford to implement since the brands funding this NGO are also squeezing these same suppliers for every last penny if they pay them at all. Tiny little detail that’s completely overlooked. Appearances like certifications are deceiving. 

While survey after survey declares that consumers care about shopping more sustainably and responsibly, the data points to the Unfashionable Reality that we care less and less. Fast fashion in all forms continues to grow — exponentially.

It’s not just increased buying from Shein, Temu, Zara, or H&M, it’s the no-name brands that pollute Amazon, Etsy, and our social media feeds. Brands like Quince who constantly promote that their quality is just as good as the fancy brands ultimately hurt brands offering true quality products.

Many of the traditional luxury names do excessively mark up their products. You’re paying for the logo and marketing expenses, not the quality of the product (um hello, thousands of dollars for a polyester skirt?) These aren’t the brands who are dying. It’s the brands making truly great quality products struggling to survive. 

The quality of our clothing in the U.S. started falling broadly after NAFTA and the WTO agreements pushed production offshore. Quality became increasingly worse after the 2008 financial crisis.  

No one could have foreseen the tsunami that has changed fashion in the form of a global financial crisis, ecommerce/search/social media that is pay to play scheme with ever rising costs, then there is the Shein effect, oh and a global pandemic. 

Everyone knows starting a business is hard and risky, but these forces have made running a brand trying to do the right thing by making a truly better quality product increasingly difficult, bordering on impossible. I don’t know any of the founders of the brands who have closed recently, but I know most people who choose the hard road to produce in the U.S. do it because they want to make a better quality product. That’s the American way, right?  

If you're like me and want to buy quality American made clothing, start shopping from these brands while you can. Pretty soon, they’re going to be collector’s items.