Word: garments
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...break in a 68-year-old water main and the subsequent power outage that threw more than half of New York City's garment district into darkness for three days earlier this month could have been a disaster for the industry, coming as it did in the midst of the crucial "market week" for next winter's holiday and resort wear. But the tenacious and long-beleaguered garment-makers treated the blackout as just one more obstacle to be overcome. Manufacturers moved goods by flashlight and held showings in rented rooms. Loyal buyers unable to place orders booked...
Perhaps not. But the industry's quick recovery masks some underlying troubles. The garment trade, which shipped $19.5 billion worth of women's and children's apparel last year, has never been weaker. Since 1973, at least 600,000 jobs have disappeared, leaving fewer than 1.9 million. Low-wage producers in the Far East and Latin America are gobbling up American markets like a Pac-Man run amuck. Hardest hit among U.S. manufacturers is Manhattan's Seventh Avenue, which has the largest share of domestic apparel sales. It is beset by relatively high labor costs, exorbitant...
...Hong Kong and Korea are being joined by new ones like Sri Lanka, Malaysia and parts of the Caribbean and Mexico. Since all these countries have access to the same machines and patterns in this low-tech business, their cheaper wages allow them to drive down costs. The typical garment worker in China makes 16? an hour; in Taiwan 57?, and in Hong Kong slightly more than $1. President Sol Chaikin of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union contends that his members "are not fat-cat steelworkers or auto workers." Their average wage is just over $5 an hour...
...fussy Western distinction between craft and art. Issey Miyake talks about the "energy" of fabric and works with a bolt of cloth like a sculptor with clay, not molding it into a presketched design but draping the whole length over a body, drawing the shape of the final garment from the fabric itself as it works in easy collaboration with the body. Rei Kawakubo, the most austere and cerebral of these new designers, speaks intensely about "getting down to the essence of shapelessness, formlessness and colorlessness." At first glance, her men's and women's clothes for Comme...
According to Barzini's saline account, one of Britain's most potent gifts to Europe was the black suit, a Continental uniform during the 19th century. This austere garment symbolized the qualities of sobriety, decency and steadiness that, along with those prodigious coal mines, allowed Britain to dominate the world for decades. The dark myth of British superiority persisted long after the country's decline, and led Britain in the 1950s to a disastrous delay in condescending to join the Common Market...