Date of publication: October 19, 2009
Source: Bloomberg News
Author: Dave Shiflett
Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) -- New York’s Garment District is being buried in a cheap Chinese suit.
“Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags [1],” a documentary airing tonight on HBO [2] at 9 p.m. New York time, traces the rise and fall of an industry that was once New York City’s biggest employer. Most of those jobs have now gone overseas, many of them to China.
Today, the schmatta (Yiddish for “rag”) trade is very ragged indeed.
The 90-minute film is fairly lively, considering it’s basically a long obit for the industry, whose fate is told in this statistic: In 1965, 95 percent of American clothing was made in the U.S. Now, only 5 percent is made here...