A decade ago, fashion newcomer Ari Jogiel turned a hat-making passion project into a one-stop-shop garment factory.

At his namesake full-package company, the downtown-based House of Ari Jogiel, everything would be “Made in Freaking Los Angeles.” The premise served the manufacturer well until demand for U.S.-made products dried up, overhead costs grew and L.A.’s garment manufacturing hub – the country’s largest – hit one of the hardest times in its extensive history.

House of Ari Jogiel, which has worked with more than 400 domestic and global brands, now produces about 30% of its garments abroad.

“It’s very challenging to keep everything in L.A., so unfortunately, we had to expand our operation,” said Jogiel, a Mexico City native who graduated from Chapman University with a degree in business administration. “Even though we prefer to make most of our garments in America, some projects are too complex, and we have to take them to other countries.”

Jogiel’s 13 L.A.-based employees bring designers’ ideas to life in a 4,000-square-foot space on the outskirts of the Fashion District, where the embattled fashion manufacturing industry’s roots run deep. 

The sector grew out of immigrant-founded tailor shops in the late 19th century and boomed as casual and sportswear fashions in the “American cool” aesthetic resonated across the nation. Before policies like Mexico’s Border Industrialization Program and the North American Free Trade Agreement incrementally pushed manufacturing abroad, L.A. rose up as a garment production superpower shaping industry practices and consumer taste.

“We don’t really do high fashion here or couture, but the popular, trend-setting styles that are cheaper to produce and easier to make that revolutionized American fashion as a whole,” said Caroline Luce, a historian at the University of California, Los Angeles Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. 

The local garment industry stands fast today despite a series of existential threats, the most recent of which have included tariff-related price volatility, supply chain disruptions and rising real estate costs. 

Immigration raids have also delivered a pronounced blow to the Fashion District,
decimating foot traffic in the shop-lined Santee Alley and sowing fear in the garment industry’s predominantly Latino and immigrant workforce. 

A year after federal agents took dozens of workers at downtown’s Ambiance Apparel clothing warehouse into custody, business still hasn’t recovered, said Daisy Gonzalez, campaign director for the Garment Worker Center. 

“(The Ambiance raid) sent a shockwave across the industry,” Gonzalez said. “The fear is still 100% there among workers.”

The local advantage

Ever since a wave of Eastern European immigration brought a cohort of skilled tailors to Boyle Heights and downtown, L.A. has had a strong, though shrunken, population of experienced garment workers. 

The local industry has downsized substantially since the 1990s, when employment peaked at around 100,000 workers. Today, roughly 19,000 patternmakers, sewists, cutters, ironers, button-hole-makers, packagers and warehouse workers carry on a longstanding legacy. 

As custom tailoring turned commercial and Hollywood’s come-up drove demand for local costume-makers, the 100-block Fashion District became a garment epicenter. 

“Back in the day, everything was consolidated into one area, and it just made the whole process so much more efficient for manufacturers,” said Anthony Rodriguez, president and chief executive of the LA Fashion District Business Improvement District.

L.A. County is home to just over 1,500 apparel manufacturing businesses, according to the most recent data from the state’s Employment Development Department. These establishments continue to benefit from some of the factors that propelled the local garment scene to national preeminence, including its skilled worker base and proximity to major ports.

Orders come from a broad cross-section of local and national brands that choose to produce clothing in L.A. for a number of reasons, whether it be speed, sustainability or ease of communication. Some of the best-known brands that operate their own factories in L.A. or partner with local cut-and-sew facilities are Los Angeles Apparel, Reformation,
AG Jeans and Revolve Group Inc.

When L.A.-raised entrepreneur Desiree Gaitan-Buchanan launched her women’s apparel brand Poplinen in 2020, she knew she wanted to manufacture her plant-based basics locally. 

“There’s so much talent here in L.A., and that’s why I felt really confident we could do this here,” Gaitan-Buchanan said. “I also wanted to be close to the process, be able to solve problems quickly, build long-term relationships. I feel a deep pride knowing that this is American made.”

Convenience is a key advantage of having most of her manufacturing partners based in and around the Fashion District, Gaitan-Buchanan said. She can easily pop over to her pattern-maker’s shop to hash out corrections and keep a close watch on the amount of waste a sample collection produces. 

Manufacturing garments sustainably and paying 30-some workers an ethical wage naturally puts Poplinen in a “premium” price category compared to mass-manufactured or fast-fashion pieces shipped from abroad. To make the cost equation work, the retailer has had to stay lean, take advantage of bulk rates, and home in on a target consumer that values quality and intentionality.

“It’s not for everybody,” Gaitan-Buchanan said.

Running a small, online apparel brand means coming “up against mountains all the time,” she said. Last year, changes in federal tariff policy threw a wrench in her plans for growth and profitability.

“Tariffs have created a lot of pressure and uncertainty, even though we manufacture here, just because of the cost of fabric and trim, and the supply chain is still very global,” Gaitan-Buchanan said. “That was really scary.”

A century of organizing

Labor movements have long been the heart of the local garment industry. The first lasting L.A. branch of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union formed between 1910 and 1911, and it was a 1933 labor strike that brought 7,500 Fashion District dressmakers together in a rallying cry for improved workplace conditions.

“Their strike does not end with a huge victory in the way we might think of it, but it was successful in the sense that the union finally adopted an industrial organizing style,” Luce said. “They really embraced getting everyone into one big union.” 

One of the loudest voices advocating for the industry today is the Garment Worker Center, founded after the discovery of an illegal sweatshop in El Monte in 1995 sounded the alarm on ongoing worker exploitation in the sector. Authorities found 72 Thai nationals who’d been working for years in forced servitude in an apartment complex.

A recent feather in the center’s cap was the 2021 signing of the Garment Worker Protection Act, which made California the first state to ban piece-rate compensation.

Before the legislation went into effect, L.A. garment workers alleged their employers, including Forever 21 Inc. and Ross Stores Inc., paid them as little as $5 an hour on a per-task basis. 

“We want to ensure that workers are in ethical and responsible workplaces and that they’re making at least the minimum wage, if not more, considering how much the cost of living is rising in Los Angeles,” Gonzalez said.

The GWC’s current campaigns encourage city, county and state investment in the garment industry, Gonzalez said.

The center is behind a motion calling on L.A. County to commission local factories for uniforms and merchandise.

It has also asked the City of L.A. to appoint a staff member focused on the sector who would apply for grants supporting workforce training, new machinery purchases and manufacturing facility upgrades.

“We’re really looking to see how the city can invest in this industry,” Gonzalez said, “and really help to build it into what it can be for the United States.”

Fashion District, sector face uncertain future

Zoning has been a key issue for garment industry advocates who worry that a push to ease L.A.’s housing crisis will cost manufacturers their space. 

The GWC fought to fit protections for local manufacturers in downtown’s 2024 zoning plan update, helping secure a requirement that new residential buildings in parts of the Fashion District include space for manufacturing or other job-producing uses.  

But Rodriguez, who leads the area’s BID, said his pressing concern isn’t a shortage of available manufacturing space but a lack of business-friendly policies and manufacturing incentives.

In a 2023 address to L.A. City Council on the zoning changes, Rodriguez estimated that 500,000 square feet of light industrial space in the Fashion District had stood vacant for more than a year-and-a-half.

Listings garnered no demand as garment factories trickled out of the historic hub into cheaper, newer spaces in Vernon, the City of Commerce and Riverside County, he said.

“All of the initiatives legislatively over the last couple of years have been done on the standpoint of workers’ rights and making sure fair wages, which is just, and I’m in support of that,” Rodriguez said. “But nothing was done on the other end to entice businesses to stay functioning in Los Angeles.”

While businesses taxes, rising rents and labor regulations have driven some factories out, others are riding out the challenge. Headwinds forced Jogiel to redefine “Made in L.A.,” but the manufacturer remains committed to local, sustainable production. 

“There is always going to be a need for projects to be on-shored,” he said, “because of how quick we can make them and how handsome they can be.”