Maxine Bedat - The Life and Death of a Garment

Billed as the Marketplace of the World, New Yorks Jacob Javits Center stood before me like a glass fortress. As a novice in the fashion world, I was intimidated by the prospect of entering the building for the 2013 MRKET menswear trade show, where buyers from across the country were descending to find the goods that would land on their shelves. I grew up in Minnesota, home of the Mall of America, the largest mall in the United States, so I thought I could handle retail on a scale as grand as this. But that morning I felt humbled by what seemed to be the aggregate of all the malls in the world, complete with the familiar convention center aroma of antifreeze and undertones of coffee and pizza grease.

My business partner and I were getting ready to launch our new ecommerce site for clothing and select homewares, Zady. We wanted to present about fifty piecesshirts, pants, and accessories for women and mencurated from brands that aligned with our philosophy and aesthetic. The goal was to unearth beautiful, artisanal products, so that day in September I was on a mission to find possible goods and brands for the site.

Approaching the enormous main atrium, I felt a chill set in, literal and metaphorical. The other buyers I could see were out for the kill, silently judging and scanning the racks of clothing and signage that stretched as far as the eye could see. Not quite knowing where to start, I walked the length of the space, stopping anytime a collection caught my eye. I approached the first sales representative with what I thought was a simple question: Can you tell me where your collection is made? He responded with a blank stare followed by a shrug of the shoulders, then averted his eyes. I couldnt believe it. Why wasnt he answering me? Didnt he know where his own goods were manufactured?

I continued down the aisle until another collection caught my eye. I asked the same question of the woman at the booth. Asia, she responded shortly, seemingly upset. What was with these people? Asia has forty-eight countries and 4.7 billion inhabitants, so while ever so slightly more specific than the first mans grunt, this information was not terribly helpful. I walked on. It didnt get better: Clothes, it turned out, were being made abroad, in the Orient, or to be super precise, China. What the hell? How did the people responsible for selling clothing to the entire US market not know something as basic as where that clothing was made? (Also, the 1960s called and wants its offensive language back.) Even saying something was designed in New York, I soon realized, was often code for made in China. After a long day trudging through Javits with zero business cards and not optimistic for Zadys future, I left frustrated, confused, and skeptical.

Having recently graduated from law school, I was not afraid of research, and quickly applied those skills to find companies that knew who made their clothes. In September 2013, we launched the business with diverse partners, including Imogene + Willie, a company cutting and sewing denim in Tennessee, and Clare Vivier, whose colorful bags were produced in Los Angeles. We interviewed the designers and those responsible for production to tell the story behind every piece we carried, an attempt to give the customer the novel experience of knowing who made their things, down to the individual. We embedded a map on our site to show where the products came from, educating customers more deeply than the brand reps at Javits.

We had thought it would be enough to explain where each article was madeas in, what the label inside the garment would say. But we soon realized that wasnt enough. Our cashmere sweater was Made in Italy, in that it was where the yarn was knit into a sweater. But the yarn was not spun in Italy and the goats whose wool fiber became yarn roamed the steppes of Mongolia (the cold weather of the steppes helps produce soft fibers). Some of the brands knew where they purchased their yarn or finished textiles, but that didnt mean they knew where those companies, in turn, had purchased the leather or cotton, wool or polyester fibers.