American Flannel: How a Band of Entrepreneurs Are Bringing the Art and Business of Making Clothes Back Home

by Steven Kurutz

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

A story of hope and American ingenuity; of defying the odds (and conventional wisdom) to chase a dream. Sits nicely alongside Factory Man by Beth Macy.

“I can confidently say this will be one of my favorite books of 2024.” —Stephen King, bestselling author (and onetime millworker)

“American Flannel is a wonderful book—surprising, entertaining, vivid and personal, but also enlightening on the largest questions of America's economic and social future.” —James Fallows, co-author of Our Towns
 
The little-engine-that-could story of how a band of scrappy entrepreneurs are reviving the enterprise of manufacturing clothing in the United States.
 
For decades, clothing manufacture was a pillar of U.S. industry. But beginning in the 1980s, Americans went from wearing 70 percent domestic-made apparel to almost none. Even the very symbol of American freedom and style—blue jeans—got outsourced. With offshoring, the nation lost not only millions of jobs but also crucial expertise and artistry.
 
Dismayed by shoddy imported “fast fashion”—and unable to stop dreaming of re-creating a favorite shirt from his youth—Bayard Winthrop set out to build a new company, American Giant, that would swim against this trend. New York Times reporter Steven Kurutz, in turn, began to follow Winthrop’s journey. He discovered other trailblazers as well, from the “Sock Queen of Alabama” to a pair of father-son shoemakers and a men’s style blogger who almost single-handedly drove a campaign to make “Made in the USA” cool. Eye-opening and inspiring, American Flannel is the story of how a band of visionaries and makers are building a new supply chain on the skeleton of the old and wedding old-fashioned craftsmanship to cutting-edge technology and design to revive an essential American dream.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593329610
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/12/2024
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	32,632
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Steven Kurutz has been a features reporter for The New York Times for more than a decade. His magazine article “Fruitland,” about the music of Donnie and Joe Emerson, was adapted for the feature film Dreamin’ Wild. He is also the author of Like a Rolling Stone: The Strange Life of a Tribute Band. Born and raised in rural Pennsylvania, he currently lives in New England with his family.

Editorial Reviews

01/22/2024

New York Times journalist Kurutz (Like a Rolling Stone) details in this encouraging report the efforts of entrepreneurs working to bring clothing manufacturing back to the U.S. The percentage of domestically produced clothes in Americans’ wardrobes has fallen from 70% in 1980 to 2% today, Kurutz notes. Profiles of individuals attempting to reverse this trend include Bayard Winthrop, who launched the company American Giant in 2012 after becoming disillusioned with the shoddy workmanship he saw in products outsourced to China, and Gina Locklear, who earned the nickname “Sock Queen of Alabama” by transforming her family’s north Alabama knitting operation into the organic sock brand Zkano. Exploring the factors that hollowed out American textile manufacturing, Kurutz details how free trade policies, beginning with NAFTA in 1993, eliminated or reduced tariffs on foreign products, igniting a race within the apparel industry to move factories to countries with the cheapest labor. The profiles humanize the machinations of the clothing market, finding in the entrepreneurs’ plights an all-American tale of resilience and self-sufficiency in the face of steep odds. Readers will be inspired to look for the Made in America label. Agent: P.J. Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Advance praise for American Flannel:

“An engrossing cross-country tour of business owners who are working to reinvigorate a flagging industry. In [Kurutz’s] excellent telling, the triumphs and setbacks of this crop of industry pioneers will leave a lasting impact while instilling hope for the future.” —Booklist

“Kurutz’s well-crafted story is one of makers defying the odds, as well as lessons in the many harms of throwaway culture.” —Kirkus Reviews

“[An] encouraging report the efforts of entrepreneurs working to bring clothing manufacturing back to the U.S… The profiles humanize the machinations of the clothing market, finding in the entrepreneurs’ plights an all-American tale of resilience and self-sufficiency in the face of steep odds.”—Publishers Weekly 

“I was hooked from the very first page. Kurutz's writing is tight, vivid, always on point. The story he tells is as important as it is absorbing. First, it's an uplifting tale of good old American inventiveness and stick-to-it-iveness, the best kind of underdog story. It is also a cautionary tale about what happens when a country becomes so rich and complacent that it forgets how to create as well as buy. I can confidently say this will be one of my favorite books of 2024.” —Stephen King, bestselling author (and onetime millworker)
 
“American Flannel is a wonderful book—surprising, entertaining, vivid and personal, but also enlightening on the largest questions of America's economic and social future. I envy Steven Kurutz his experience in reporting for this book, and I am grateful that he has shared the results so generously with the rest of us.” —James Fallows, co-author of Our Towns

“Captures the fabric of an essential American experience. Steven Kurutz reminds us that all sustainability and resilience is local, and that we are not just consumers but makers and members of communities.” —William McDonough, author of Cradle to Cradle and The Upcycle

“In this heartbreaking and inspiring book, Kurutz explains what we lost by giving away the clothing industry and how some people are trying to get it back, with the dreams, ingenuity, and hard work that built the nation in the first place.” —Thomas Dyja, author of New York, New York, New York and The Third Coast

From the Publisher

2024-01-04
A New York Times fashion reporter digs into the economics of manufacturing clothing—and why so much of it is trash.

“Clothing is a basic human need,” writes Kurutz of the decline of American clothing manufacturing. “What did it mean for a nation to lose the ability to make it on any scale?” Textiles had long ago moved to the South from New England to chase cheap labor; now they travel across oceans. Kurutz, the author of Like a Rolling Stone, surveys that economic history before settling on a few people determined to restore the “Made in America” label, such as an Alabama woman working to remake her hometown as the sock capital of America, as it once was before George W. Bush signed a law allowing “socks made from U.S.-spun yarn [to] be sent to Honduras or another low-cost country to have the toes sewn shut, then shipped back to America duty-free.” The flannel maker of the title chased after a shirt of the quality he’d worn as a teenager, nursing “a desire for timeless quality in a disposable culture.” Talk about a white whale: That excellent shirt had been offshored, and what came back was guaranteed to fall apart after a few washings, whether it was a big-box house brand or a boutique name. The flannel fan pressed on, founding a product line limited to a few classic items: flannel shirts, sweatshirts, and T-shirts. Labor costs added to the price tag—but so, too, did recovering lost knowledge, and then there was the problem of right-wingers seizing the “Made in the U.S.A.” slogan as political currency. Kurutz’s well-crafted story is one of makers defying the odds, as well as lessons in the many harms of throwaway culture.

Guaranteed to be of interest to anyone who appreciates bespoke and well-made goods, as well as artisan pride.

Kirkus Reviews