What is happening to the fashion Industry...?
I've been a fashion professional for over 20 years. My first job was delivering Graded Patterns and Makers to all the High end fashion houses in the heart of the fashion industry. My uncle had a Pattern/Grading service since the late 70's. I was 15 years old at the time but I can remember how full of life the industry was. There were sweat shops of course, but there was also a slew of young designers who are now very famous. There were also a slew of the old school Italian Master Patternmaker's who hung out in the corners of 38 street on 7th smoking there cigarettes and cigars. In the early 80's most of the Patternmaker's were predominantly Italian, sprinkled in with some Russian. They all wore mostly double breasted suits and slicked back DA's. There used to be a time when every fashion house had a few in house Patternmakers, working pumping out Beautiful designs. Everything was still being made domestically. Pattern services were making a lot of money. Button and fabric merchants were doing great. Sewing and cutting rooms were always busy. There were a lot of jobs then. The Industry started changing in the late 90's.
Cheaper overseas labor and production had forced many designers who once manufactured their lines in the city to shift production overseas, which has in turn affected small cutting and sewing rooms as well as zipper, button and supply stores in the Garment District.
All the Patternmaker's (the backbone of the industry)have either retired, died, or forced out to make room for a new type of Patternmaker called a technical Designer. Patternmaker's were true craftsmen, they had to know about proportion, balance, and the shape of the human body. It took a long time for a person to become a Master Patternmaker. You had to develop what they called the "EYE". Having the"eye" meant that you know your contours, your measurements, It meant that you know your shit! These were high paying jobs. If you were a master Patternmaker in the 80's and 90's you were making anywhere from 1000 to 2000 dollars a week.
Now the industry has scooped up by 2 or 3 major players who have licensed all the major brands and it has become all about quantity! Hence the Technical Designer who sits in a cubicle all day crunching measurements together in order to send these technical packages to Patternmakers in China and India. The art of actually designing is going the way of the dinosaur. This new breed of "Patternmakers" are being paid a lot less than Patternmaker's of old because there are so many of them.
And now there are whispers of the fashion Industry moving to Brooklyn (see link)....
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/nyregion/new-york-garment-industry-brooklyn.html
I can go on and on about what's wrong with Industry today but I'll just stop there. Does anyone here on Steemit work in the Industry? And if so, I would like to get your take on it.