American Apparel
American apparel has gone through a shift in recent years from convenience to comfort. But through it all American apparel has maintained its own uniqueness. Not as cocky as the British, not as elegant as the French, and not as silky smooth as the Italians. American apparel has also given much of the youth of the world their defiant uniforms. From James Dean and Elvis and their puffed up leather jackets to the immortal Marilyn Monroe and other American divas and pinup girls the world has certainly felt an American touch in its clothing and apparel. The American apparel industry has a long and like the country itself, a sometimes primitive side. As early as the late 1700’s there are records of young white women working in mills in the Northeastern United States and by 1812 there was a large integrated textile factory operating in Lowell, Massachusetts. Many thousands of slaves from Africa were also employed as field workers picking cotton to provide the raw material. Many women also worked at home as seamstresses but were moved out into factories with the invention of the sewing machine in the 1850’s. By the end of that century there were tens of thousands of women, mostly immigrant Italians and Jews, who were working in small factories or sweatshops. The conditions in these factories were hot and dangerous. In 1911 a fire at one of them, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory