American Flannel: How A Band Of Entrepreneurs Are Bringing The Art And Business Of Making Clothes Back Home,New

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 booksurprising, entertaining, vivid and personal, but also enlightening on the largest questions of America's economic and social future. James Fallows, coauthor of Our TownsThe littleenginethatcould 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 domesticmade apparel to almost none. Even the very symbol of American freedom and styleblue jeansgot outsourced. With offshoring, the nation lost not only millions of jobs but also crucial expertise and artistry.Dismayed by shoddy imported fast fashionand unable to stop dreaming of recreating a favorite shirt from his youthBayard 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 Winthrops journey. He discovered other trailblazers as well, from the Sock Queen of Alabama to a pair of fatherson shoemakers and a mens style blogger who almost singlehandedly drove a campaign to make Made in the USA cool. Eyeopening 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 oldfashioned craftsmanship to cuttingedge technology and design to revive an essential American dream.