How our clothes are made: Part I
Today I read this article on the labor conditions of those who make Apple’s iPad in China. It reminded me that now might be a good time to start a series I’ve been meaning to write on how Adooka is made. I am so proud that our clothes are made by fellow U.S. citizens, and thought you might like to see some photos and hear a little bit about the people who make our clothes.
I’ll start with the cutting room — I’m skipping around here, because cutting is way down the line in the order of how things are done. I just happened to have these photos I took when I dropped off some fabric rolls for this spring’s production.
The cutting room is in an old building in the city of Philadelphia. Other companies, including at least one well-known boutique clothing brand, share this building. The man who runs the cutting business is an older gentleman who has been doing this for decades, and cuts for many brands, big and small (he was shy about me taking his picture, so you won’t get to see him). Like many aspects of garment making, cutting is a skill that we may be losing here in the U.S. When I talk to other business owners, including factory owners, I often hear that there is a labor shortage in this industry of good operators and cutters. They are hard to find! We are lucky to have found ours.
Here is what the cutting room looks like:
The room is large, with high ceilings and windows all around. You can see that they have good lighting — rows of lights suspended over each of the very long tables. I took this photo between Christmas and New Year’s, so many of the tables were not in use. During heavy production times, these tables would all be full of spread fabric. Here’s how the cutting works: say I am making a dress in sizes 2T-6. First I have the patternmaker lay out all the pattern pieces for the dress, one set of pieces (front, back, two sleeves, etc.) for each size that I’m making. I will do a separate post on this process — for now it’s enough to know that she makes a printout of all the pieces needed for each size (called a “marker”), and sends it to the cutter. The black machines at the ends of the tables are spreading machines — they spread the fabric back and forth in layers (called “plies”) across the table, to the exact length of the marker. If I want to make 200 dresses, and I have 5 sizes on the marker, the cutter will have to spread 40 plies of fabric on the table. You can see spread fabric with a paper marker on top in the top left table of this photo. If it’s a knit fabric, it rests here for a day or so, to let the fabric relax flat (after being tightly rolled on the fabric roll). When it’s time to cut, a cutter uses a vertical knife saw that is suspended from above to cut out the shapes of the pattern pieces. He cuts through all 40 plies at once, and ends up with stacks of each piece (40 size 2T fronts, 40 size 2T backs, etc.), which he bundles together with ties, leaving the printout piece on top so the factory will know what each bundle is.
Here is a photo of cutting in action:
As you can see, the cutting here is all done by hand. In some companies, laser cutters are used, and everything is computerized. All of the traditional shops I’ve seen have done it by hand.
I hope you enjoyed a little glimpse into our processes. More to come! Our big make-way-for-spring sale is still going on — pretty much everything is marked way down to prepare for our upcoming Big Exciting News.
