The Modern Gold Rush

A new gold rush has taken over the 21st century, with aspiring designers flocking to NYC and LA, chasing the dream of owning and operating their very own clothing brand. This new “get-rich-quick scheme” is trendy, and everyone wants a piece of it. Unfortunately, it comes at a price. With access to producing cheaper garments with cheaply outsourced labor and a lower bar to entry, we are losing a piece of our once great artisanal culture at a rapid, somewhat unrepairable pace.¡

The Low Bar to Entry

It’s not surprising that this is happening when the bar to entry has become as easy as sending a reference garment to a factory you found on AliExpress and asking them to reproduce it with slight alterations. The number of duplicative “cropped, boxy-fit, distressed-zip hoodies with a garment overdye” I’ve seen over the last few years copying brands like Hellstar and SP5DER within the current cesspool of Instagram brands is beyond me. If you’re asking yourself “where can I get clothing made cheap and easy” or “what’s the cheapest country to manufacture clothing,” then hoping to send off a hoodie to reproduce and make an easy million dollars, I hope this article encourages you to reconsider and reframe your thinking.

Cheap & Easy

Clothing has also become way cheaper to produce. When I was making clothing, I would pay $48 for a jacket that I’d sell for $198, $7.50 for a tee I’d sell for $40, and the list goes on. One of the most enticing factors for people to get into the industry isn’t the clothing itself, it’s the amount of money and revenue they can generate with it. I was fueled with the wrong motivations and never felt a connection to my clothing. I always told myself it was a “business” not a creative passion, but it was just an excuse to not feel bad about the stuff I was making. My ancestors operated their businesses as a business, but also as a craft—something they would learn and develop into something that was true to them. With our new cultural drive, we can skip over that entirely, so what do you think is bound to happen?

A Culture Promoting Speed & Money

Not only is there a capitalistic drive in our modern culture, but also a drive for status. Striving for the largest amount of followers and to be put on a pedestal as a “creative director.” But when our motivations begin to deviate from the art and purpose of making clothing, so does its quality. We begin replacing the once great culture we had with one that’s toxic, money-hungry, and status-driven. Being fueled by the wrong motivations is what it takes to destroy a once great culture.

My Experience Doing This

And I’m not just hating from an outside perspective; I was one of those people for several years. I stopped asking real questions that designers used to pride themselves on, a few being: Is there room in the market for this product? Does this garment need to exist? How can we build this product right?

When these questions fell by the wayside, I ended up producing ephemeral, overproduced, low-quality garments you could not distinguish from other brands aside from the tag on the clothing.

The patience and dedication that once were necessary to create quality clothing are clearly dissipating. The craft is no longer being passed down, meaning we are missing out on crucial lessons and information from the older generations who were actually in this culture. The values that used to distinguish our artisanal culture have been thrown aside to make growth and capitalization easier and easier.

My grandfather, George Selden, owned a fabric mill in Boston, MA, called Methuen International. He sold fabrics, primarily suiting and flannel materials, to notable brands which used to pride themselves on their quality. The business shut down due to the majority of business shifting further across the globe. I never got to see his mill, I never got to learn the trade, and there was nothing left to pass on.

But the rapid degeneration of this culture happened within the last 20 years, not the last 80. Throughout the course of the 19th century, primarily around the 40s and 50s, the majority of brands began sourcing and producing outside of the United States in the pursuit of cheaper, easier-to-produce garments. In the earky 1900s, 95% of clothing purchased in the US was MADE HERE. Even in the 1980s, we were still sitting at around 70%. You know what we are at now? 2.5%.

But in my opinion, this isn’t where the issue arose. Rather, it came within the accessibility to this outsourcing. This ease of use, when paired with social media and hype culture, we began facilitating a new culture around clothing. One that prioritizes money and financial gain over value.

But this is how the culture had shifted. Craftsmanship is no longer valued the way it used to be.

This is not meant to be a pessimistic article. The culture is not gone and is still being sustained by designers like Kentucky Boy Tyler, William Burke, Asspizza, and Tommy Jack Oddo Verdier (and plenty more).

And if you can take one thing away from this article, think before you make. Let ideas simmer and think through the process… we are no longer in a gold rush, so there’s no need to act like it.