When he was little, Nelson Sanders remembers his parents dressing up almost every time they went out. And his parents weren't the only adults in Detroit who cared about their appearance after they took off the work clothes.
"There was crazy style here," Sanders said. "My parents didn't have much, but they'd always make sure they were decked out. On Friday nights in Detroit, you had to come with it."
While dressing up in a suit and tie or your nicest dress is no longer the norm for a night out, that doesn't mean fashion is no longer important here. That's why Sanders started The Seen, which started off as a collective of fashion-conscious individuals highlighting neighborhoods and businesses, and has recently morphed into a creative marketing and talent agency.
"When people think fashion, they think of Paris, New York, London," Sanders said. "Most wouldn't say Detroit. I wanted to show people around here and the world what Detroit style looks like. There are a lot of genuinely stylish people here, but they just don't have the platform to showcase it."
Sanders isn't the only one working to raise Detroit's profile as an important fashion city, and not just in the way it dresses. In design, manufacturing and distribution for the fashion industry, Detroit is growing its local talent and businesses to become a fashion hub.
Keeping talent local
Like Sanders, Karen Buscemi was frustrated with Detroit's inability to realize its potential in the fashion industry. While the editor of fashion magazine StyleLine, she kept noticing industry talent leaving the state, almost always for New York City or Los Angeles. "They felt they couldn't make it here," Buscemi said.
To remedy the problem, Buscemi founded the Detroit Garment Group (DGG), an organization that supports Detroit's fashion industry in a variety of ways. For starters, DGG runs a business incubator program out of TechTown, which has mentors and services for the various aspects of running a fashion business, as well as access to industrial sewing machines and design studios.
"Michigan has a lot of colleges that have really good fashion programs," Buscemi said, "but not one offers a business program — they just teach the craft. Students graduate, and don't know what to do with the skills."
Another issue in the state is the scarcity of skilled industrial sewers. So DGG helped found an industrial sewing certificate program through Henry Ford College with support from Michigan Works. The program has graduated 14 classes so far, and will be adding a fabric cutting program in the fall.
The certificate program has become a pipeline to Buscemi's business, Detroit Sewn, a full-service sewing factory she started in 2015 because of the lack of garment manufacturing in the state. "I was getting daily inquiries about where you could produce garments locally," she said.
Customers have flocked to Detroit Sewn. Buscemi said the company services 130 clients and has 12 employees. And all the industrial sewers have come from the certificate program.
Detroit's innovative
Buscemi's most ambitious project is the creation of a garment district in Detroit. Renowned garment districts in New York City and Los Angeles contain concentrations of designers, cut and sew operations, bigger manufacturers, showrooms, distributors and wholesalers. The districts are a catalyst for the industry, which benefits from the vertical integration created by close proximity.
But due to rising property values, the garment district in Manhattan is no longer a practical place to locate for smaller manufacturers or warehouses, which are essential to the industry.
That's where Detroit has an advantage. Buscemi's initial plan calls for the aggregation of 40,000 square feet of space with room to grow.
Detroit Denim is an example of a small manufacturer that might benefit from locating in a local garment district. The company makes men's jeans. Each pair is hand-sewn and made from high-quality selvedge denim sourced in the United States. Because of the smaller production scale — Detroit Denim makes about 40 pairs of jeans per week — the company does limited runs, special orders, and unique cuts that other jean producers don't offer.
The result of this process is considerably less waste.
"Our country promotes a culture of disposable clothing," said Brenna Lane, production and operations manager. "Most clothes have a lifespan of months and then get thrown out. … I tell customers that they're investing in a piece of clothing, rather than something disposable."
Detroit Denim recently moved to a new retail and manufacturing space in Harbortown and currently employs eight people.
Another Detroit clothing manufacturer, Lazlo, makes plain white T-shirts out of the Corktown makerspace Ponyride. Once again, it's not your standard T-shirt. Lazlo's shirts are made of supima cotton, an extra-long staple variety that results in softer and more durable fabric, and which accounts for about 3 percent of United States cotton production. Of this, Lazlo sources organic, which is only 1 percent of supima growers produce.
Sustainability is important to Lazlo's business model. Co-founder Christian Birky said he was appalled at the waste and poor labor practices in the fashion industry, where the norm is to manufacture clothes from cheap materials using cheap labor.
"We said, 'Let's try to make white the best possible white T-shirt' and see what was possible," Birky said. "But also know who it's made by, where it's made, and what it's made out of."
The shirts are sold out of several Michigan stores as well as online.
The company also worked with the Michigan Department of Corrections to train inmates in cutting and sewing and recently hired its first returning citizen, who earns $15 an hour.
The biggest obstacle Detroit Denim and Lazlo have to overcome is consumer conventions around the cost of clothing. Higher-quality materials and fairly-compensated labor results in much higher prices — $250 for a pair of jeans and $110 for a T-shirt.
"Even though these are not traditionally luxury products, because of the quality and craftsmanship, they're priced as a luxury product," said Erin Patton, director of Retail and Marketing at Ponyride. "Fashion has struggled for many years to have proven models that are sustainable. If someone doesn't try to do it, it'll never be done. … It's a lot they're asking to shift customer behavior."
The time is now
Buscemi's been working on bringing the garment district to fruition for several years now. She said she has an important institutional partner, which she declined to disclose, and hopes to make an announcement by the end of the summer.
"This is the perfect time," Buscemi said. "Detroit is so damn sexy right now. Everyone wants to manufacture in Detroit, wants to say this is from Detroit, made in Detroit — it's ridiculous."
Shinola, founded just six years ago, is possibly the most prominent example of the popularity of Detroit as a brand. The company displays "Detroit" on all its products, which they sell from over 20 stores in every corner of the United States. Other fashion companies have capitalized on the Detroit brand, such as Detroit Is The New Black, Detroit Versus Everybody, and Detroit Hustles Harder.
While Detroit Denim and Lazlo may not be large-scale manufacturers, their impact could be significant. Birky thinks there's an opportunity to define Detroit as a center for ethical clothing manufacturing.
"There's a number of people working to bring advanced knitting facilities to Detroit," Birky said. "No city in the country owns that yet. This is new technology and a new approach that New York or L.A. doesn't have a monopoly on. Detroit can say, 'Here's what we do.' That's a movement that some city is going to seize sooner rather than later, and I hope it will happen here."
