Retro jeans to save the ancient textile mills
Business community on May 25 in the United States, North Carolina, north-central city Greensboro, home textile factory called "white oak" (part of Cohen cowboy), Bolen, 50 years of textile workers here. repeatedly experienced the replacement of plant closures, layoffs and fashion. In the 1950s, factory production
<click here for link> of blue-collar workers to wear denim, and later production of bell-bottoms, and is now popular stovepipe pants and do the old style. Bolen, 77-year-old, found, and now her skills are very sought. Because people like his grandfather's generation to wear jeans, because the kind of pants are more personalized.
In the 1950s, Bolen, a start when the "white oak" factory work, Greensboro is a manufacturing center. The late 1970s, exports of furniture manufacturers, textile mills and garment factories closed in succession. "White Oak plant has a history of 107 years, the United States the oldest denim factory. Today, many of the factory buildings have been demolished, the textile workshop area of ​​only 1/4.
Thanks to the vagaries of fashion, "White Oak" factory and 300 employees (in the 1970s to 2800 employees) retained until now. Cohen denim company's product development
<click here for link>director Bud Strickland said: "Suddenly, people are asking about a pair of jeans look like, so we decided to move out of old machines to produce those ancient."
Old jeans jeans than it is now more durable, wear a long time there will be a layer of gloss. But by the 1970s, many American textile mills use high-speed textile machines to produce cheaper clothes, the jeans slowly disappeared. Modern weaving machines, high efficiency, but the lack of woven fabric the texture and personality.
The acquisition of the "white oak" U.S. Agency for International Textile Group Chief Operating Officer Kenneth Kunberger said: "factory to the" white oak "still in production, it is because the grasp of fashion, I'm afraid the world is still running the old-fashioned shuttle looms running out. "
Levi's founder Levi Strauss is a big buyer of the "white oak". Levi's Vintage fabrics are washed products to imitate the white oak plant has produced fabrics.
White oak plant has always been a research center. In the 1920s, its research and development of printing and dyeing method patents; 1969, floods cloth soaked in dirty warehouse, workers wash cloth, but occasionally first bleached jeans. This year, the factory began to use plastic bottles to the production of fabrics.
Although this plant is doing well, but the U.S. Agency for International Textile Group, last year's loss was as high as $ 80.2 million. Euromonitor data show that since 2009, global
<click here for link>demand has rebounded jeans, high-end jeans sales this year expected an increase of 3.7 percent to $ 8.2 billion. Retail consultant of the consulting firm Kurt Salmon's Todd Hooper said: "high-end denim is a growing market, made of jeans cost at least $ 170 each.
Bolen is, this is good news. "After working for half a century, I am too familiar with this plant. I am very proud, raised three children. I laid off numerous times, each time,
<click here for link> ready to tell them when I re-induction