American Flannel

America’s first textile mill started up the same year the Constitution was signed, and for decades clothing manufacture was a pillar of US industry. But between 1980 and the present, we went from wearing 70 percent American made to almost none. As the industry went offshore, the US lost not only jobs but the expertise, technology, and artistry needed to produce high-quality clothing. Dismayed by shoddy imported “fast fashion,” and unable to stop dreaming of recreating a favorite shirt from his youth, Bayard Winthrop set out to build a new company, American Giant, that would produce quality, affordable domestic-made clothing. Impressed and intrigued, New York Times reporter Steven Kurutz, who had witnessed the devastation of the industrial heartland growing up in rural Pennsylvania, began to follow Winthrop’s journey.