Moore Style - Is Fashion Dead in America? Master Pleater Reveals How Fast Fashion Killed Craftsmanship

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Our fashion choices can change more than just our appearance—they can revive an entire culture of craftsmanship! I sat down with George Kalajian, a fifth-generation artisan with a deep passion for fashion. We talked about New York’s once-thriving garment district, and how the rise of fast fashion didn’t just change the way we shop—it nearly erased the soul of American-made quality. George shared how our obsession with cheap, fast fashion has led to a loss of skills, artistry, and pride. He shared how what used to be considered standard quality is now labeled “luxury” simply because so few people know how to make things well anymore. But there's hope! Through mentorship programs like Project Golden Bear, George is rebuilding the future of fashion one apprentice at a time. If you care about craftsmanship, sustainability, or simply want to buy better, tune in now. Let’s bring heart and integrity back to fashion together!“What is considered to be luxury today is what was just well-made 40 or 50 years ago.” ~ George KalajianIn this Episode:- Introducing George Kalajian- The garment district then and now- The shift to overseas production - The decline of craftsmanship- Reviving artistry in fashion: Project Golden Bear- Challenges of fast fashion and decline in fabric quality- The economic impact of consumer fashion choices - A historical perspective on luxury fashion- Future plans and contact informationAbout George KalajianGeorge Kalajian is a master craftsman and owner of Tom’s Sons International Pleating, a family business in New York City’s Garment District with over 150 years of heritage. His expertise in pleating has made him a trusted collaborator for iconic fashion brands like Oscar de la Renta, Coach,  Vera Wang and Ralph Lauren, as well as major productions like the MET Gala and Hollywood films. Co-author of Pleating: Fundamentals for Fashion Design, George carries on the legacy of his father, Leon, ensuring that the art of pleating continues to inspire and evolve.Connect with George Kalajian:Website: https://internationalpleating.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgekalajiantomssonsinternationalpleating  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/internationalpleating/   Connect with me here:🌐Website - https://celestemoore.com/👤Facebook - https://facebook.com/profile.php?id=100078179075595📷 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/celestemooreimage/TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@celestemooreimage▶️YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@celestemooreimage

the garment industry is basically hanging on by a thread you know the new york city manufacturing industry is hanging on by a thread the new york city garment industry is a hundred years old and for one century all of this technique has been culminating and brewing and growing and expanding it came from the irish the jewish uh the french so you have centuries of knowledge in different countries that they all come to New York and all of this knowledge blends together and grows and develops. What we now call luxury used to be the standard quality. And when did that shift happen and why? What is considered to be luxury today is. You're listening to MoreStyle, a podcast to help you transform your image and transform your influence.

Today we're exposing the truth on why it matters what you wear. We're talking about the dying art of craftsmanship and artistry in the fashion world. And today I have George Kalajian talking to us about why this matters. So let's dive into today's episode. So George, welcome to today's show and thank you for being on this episode. Thank you so much for having me, Celeste. I'm super excited um you know you and i met maybe less than a year ago yes or was it no it was about a year okay about a year and some a good friend of ours connected us because we're both into fashion but i didn't know what that meant before i talked to you and then i see this like teddy bear on your shirt right this this brand that you this new brand i'll let you talk about that later but

when you started, literally you had, I think, 30 seconds to two minutes to talk to me. The passion that came out of your voice and the passion that came out with your message, it slapped me in the face because I was like, oh my God, there's someone in this industry that thinks and feels the same way I do. Although you have lived this legacy for over 150 years, your family's fifth generation. To me, I don't embody that, but the fact that our messages matched, I was like, oh, instant connect. I like love this man. I love everything that you stand for. So I can't wait to get into a few of these questions that you want really the audience to hear about. So let's, let's get into it. Awesome. Cool. So you literally walked through

the garment district since you were a child what was it like then and what do you see when you walk through it now so yeah i've been coming since i was a kid about probably five years old and there was so much hustle and bustle back then yeah uh like there were semi trucks parked on both sides of all of the side streets you could not see the other side of the street okay i mean i remember like walking one day on the other side of 35th street and being like oh wow there's a new restaurant here and i'd find out it was there for like two years you know because there were so many trucks coming and going because there was so much product being loaded and unloaded all going to distribution center so that's one second thing is eighth avenue half of eighth avenue was um

trucks and uh not trucks uh hand trucks push carts going back and forth full of cut material sewn goods i mean it was just a highway of all this product going back and forth um seventh avenue was where all the buyers would were to hang out and all the pattern makers and then eighth avenue was where all the laborers were going back and forth so it was like almost like two different universes all merging and there was so much product being made there was factories everywhere my father used to say that uh about 50 years ago if you threw a rock you would hit two pleaters really there was that many pleaters there was that many pleaters yeah the Yellow Pages, I don't know if anyone knows what Yellow Pages is.

I mean, I do. But there would be all these, you know, pleaders in there. I mean, there was everything. There was so many options of everything. Now, it's all basically law firms and advertising agencies and all these random, random businesses. And, you know, the garment industry is basically hanging on by a thread. You know, the New York City manufacturing industry is hanging on by a thread.

Talk to me about why that is. So that is a multifaceted kind of a question or an answer, I should say. But the biggest thing I would have to say is, you know, overseas production. So everything started to go overseas because of costing. and uh at one point this is i'm talking now like maybe in the 70s 80s is when things started to go to china and uh i should say it was probably in the 70s or 80s or is when i started to notice that oh wow like some manufacturer is deciding to send their shipment their production to to china and it was significantly cheaper you know it was so much so you're like wow oh my god how could that

be. Then Chinese contractors started to come to New York and then the Chinese contractors started to basically fight with overseas companies, other with China, basically to drive the price down. They started working 24 hours, you know, never stopping basically the factory and prices kept on going down and down and down. And for the regular manufacturers, this became a challenge because you know it no longer was really about quality it was more price driven and hence you know this concept of wow I can buy a blouse for you know two or three dollars or ten dollars as opposed to spending a hundred dollars so you know hence the birth of fast fashion and all these other manufacturers and they

were thriving and it was very tempting in the beginning you know it was very tempting because why who doesn't want to pay less for something you know but now as we see the costs or I should say the side effects of fast fashion have kind of come to the surface and you know there is this I guess this desire to make things in America again but that's also a loaded question as far as like can it be done or can is it possible for this to to occur again yeah you've mentioned that what we now call luxury used to be the standard quality and when did that shift happen and why okay so let's go back to like the 80s and 90s okay okay um back then there were many dress manufacturers or many garment manufacturers that specialized in a particular

niche and they were very good at that particular niche um and there were various qualities let's just say there was very cheap quality there was good quality and then there was what's considered luxury okay and uh or you could say slash couture you know what i'm saying yeah uh because couture also has a whole other connotation of it's not here it's in this country now it's described as more of a of a of a of a verb kind of but it's actually more of a it's a noun it's a it's a designation of someone so as a result of things moving overseas factories start closing people start retiring um and there is this skill this craft is basically disappearing so today because it's so hard to find people that can actually make good quality high-end quality clothing it's

very difficult um what is considered to be luxury today is what was just well made 40 or 50 years ago and this uh problem got exasperated during covid okay because during covid all these factories shut down for a long time. And really it's the old school people that know, that have the skill and they all retired basically. A lot of them unfortunately passed away, but a lot of them were like, you know, forget about this. I don't want to go back to work. And as a result, there is not enough knowledge. Now, in order to understand, like, I guess, let me give you some more perspective to this. The garment industry, the New York City garment industry is a hundred years old basically it's a century old and for one century all of this technique has been um

has been culminating and brewing and growing and expanding and cross-contaminating i guess you can say um and and this knowledge came from other countries from immigrants from other countries it came from the irish the jewish uh the french all these other different countries that came to New York and they performed their specialty for centuries in their countries. So you have centuries of knowledge in different countries that they all come to New York and all of this knowledge blends together and grows and develops. And now we're confronted with the fact that these people that know how to do this are gone. And most of the time when an immigrant comes to a country or comes to this country, their goal isn't for their child to work in that

factory. You know, their goal is for their child to be a doctor or a lawyer and not necessarily work so hard. And so as a result, these immigrants would put their children through these other, you know, college, all that stuff. And so there wouldn't be the next generation of that. Now, the current generation, there is, I've seen a resurgence like this new generation that's coming up they love working with their hands and they want to do something and they want to make something but for them to achieve like the level and caliber of super quality is practically impossible for them because they're not growing or learning in an environment where they can observe this technique so I mean when I was a child I come to my father's factory when I was five years old and I would

observe my father I would observe my mother my aunt my grandmother I would see what they were doing for years you know and I worked with them eventually I would work with them and I would observe so I mean when you stand next to someone for 40 years of your life who stood next to his family for 60, 70 years of his life working. The volume of information and skill that you get is like plugging into like the major AI. It's priceless. It's priceless. I mean, I consider myself blessed to have worked with my father.

Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. And I know that you're so passionate about that too. Cause when you talk about students coming out of fashion school, Parsons, FIT, whatever that looks like, they don't know how to, you, I don't know, but I thought this is what I heard, but even properly. So is that correct? Or some of them or, um, you know, I don't want to, yeah, I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus throwing the, the, what I'm trying to get at is the, the quality that they're learning is much different because maybe it's at a faster pace.

Maybe there aren't those people to mentor, to do apprenticeships, right. To continue for them to, to grow and develop as a designer, an artist, a whatever you want to call them. Yeah.

They don't, they just simply put, they don't have enough time invested in it. Okay. I mean, four years in college is basically like an appetizer. I mean, that's the way that school is set up. It's an appetizer.

Try this, try that, try this, try that for someone to know, are they going to specialize in suits, gowns, corsetry, lingerie, you know? So they get out of school and they don't have the time drilling the actual skill. It's like a doctor that goes to medical school and never does his residency. Got it. You know, the residency is, I think most residencies are three years. I'm not sure something like that three years and it's pretty much like an obscene amount of hours so they're basically packing six years of training so the doctor goes to school for four years

and then does basically six years packed in that's like 10 yards 10 years that's like 10 years of training so that doesn't exist for fashion school today there is no real drilling and you know karate kid style you know yeah true apprentice and mentorship correct correct and that's something that the French do invest their time in and Americans in the fashion industry we're like we're really behind the eight ball when it comes to that do you think that's going to change I think that people are starting to make a change for that there's two organizations there's the one that I recently started which is called project golden bear and then there's another organization a wonderful organization

called closely crafted and they are actually helping artisans be able to recruit apprentices and to finance uh the training of them so that it's less of a burden on the artisan because most artisans are small you know family uh family businesses you know that's awesome yeah so my project project golden bear i just recently got my nine month profit status my 5 0 1 3. Thank you. It was felt like it was like giving childbirth. Um, but it was about two, two months ago, three months ago, and, uh, I've been piloting it for a while. And so the basic premise of my, uh, nonprofit is to allow the student to be in an environment, the way I was to be in the factory, to be doing something inside of the factory that doesn't necessarily

harm the factory or doesn't necessarily put them in a position where they could make a mistake so they're doing something on the sideline which which for me happens to be the manufacturing of golden teddy bears and other teddy bears that are made from scraps so they're on the sidelines basically they're cutting these bears cutting cutting cutting cutting like i said wax on wax off if you don't want to get that skill in then it's basically not for you uh and the purpose of it is to develop your hand-eye coordination and also that particular position what i find when i've trained all my interns is that that particular position where you're you are the cutter your technical knowledge and your technical design experience grows the most oh wow yeah so i've

put multiple people in multiple positions and that one they have excelled the most because you cut something you give it to the seamstress the seamstress sees something wrong and gives it back to you and then you're like what happened and then you have to go and repeat the process over again and it enables you to have the foresight and the imagination uh to predict when things will go wrong to make sure that you don't create any stops on the lines so the idea is they do this skill and then as they get better they're pulled into the actual project that's going on in the factory at that time and it's like if they have the skill set hey come over here i need you to cut this for me and they will do it and they'll resume back to

their project of you know cutting the bear and they do this until they get to the point where they no longer they're they're good enough that they can start training the next apprentice and they're pretty much working in the factory doing other types of things, which are real customer work. So talk to me a little bit more about project golden bear. Tell me where, um, how did this start and where are you at in the process or what it, what does it look like? So golden bear project, golden bear kind of was like something that took several years in the making. There were several problems that i had noticed with my father one was the fact that the new generation that's coming out of school doesn't necessarily have the skills to do something like we couldn't

tell them go do this we had to hold their hand and it was a little bit too much um the other problem that we saw in the in the industry was that there's so much fabric waste you know we work with the most high-end beautiful fabrics very high-end designers they choose all these beautiful fabrics and there's all these cuttings and it's like what can we do with these fabrics most designers don't want them back because they're very very small so I tried to make all these different products I made bralettes bags tops scarves and each of them had their own issues. And I was thinking like, okay, what can I make that's uni size, uni sex, uni age, just uni everything. And then one day I was working with this gold lame, this beautiful

gold lame. And I thought, how cool would it be to have a gold lame teddy bear? I've never seen that before. And so we made one and it was like, wow, that's cool. And then I just threw in the corner. And then people would see it here and there and they'd be like, oh my God, that's so cool. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Then one day there was a famous influencer that was friends with my wife. Her name was Jessie Lee Ward. I don't know if you know her. Her name was Boss Lee. Anyway, she came to our house to do a meet and greet. And I thought, okay, well, the middle Eastern in me is coming out. I have to give her a gift. So I grabbed this thing. I packaged it, I packaged it up and I gave it to her and she freaked out and everyone in the room

freaked out. And they were like, Oh my God, what is this thing? And I was like, wow, there's something here to this gold bear. And then, um, couple months goes down the road. And then I meet someone who's also a friend of jesse lee's um uh season johnson and uh she has her own non-profit and she says to me you know gold is the color of children's cancer and i'm like really and she's like yeah she said my child had cancer and she's explaining to me about the process and how difficult it is and they started a non-profit that would assist the parent in dealing with this being confronted with this fact and then i said do you think that this bear will help would be like of any comfort or help to these to these children she was like absolutely

so i said okay well this is great i can train the next generation of fashion designers i can utilize all these scraps so we keep them out of the landfill and the byproduct of what these kids are doing is going to comfort children with cancer. So, uh, I decided to pilot it. We did it for about six months. I had a student reach out to me from the high school of fashion industries. Um, and then I met, when I met you, I met our mutual friend, Nick. Yes. Nick Sinanon. And, um, and I asked him, I said, I have this crazy idea. What do you think about this idea? Because he's in philanthropy. And he was like, I think it's brilliant. I stand behind you 100%. I'm totally dedicated to making you, you know, succeed in your in your in your objectives. And and that's

basically it. I just decided, okay, I'm gonna do this. Yeah, so I've seen a few of your tear jerking moment videos when you're giving these bears or they're unpackaging them to these children and it's like every like you said you're you're taking three big issues in the world and you're creating you're solving a problem if you will or you're giving joy to one and it's just it's genius so thank you you know has nick been able to help you further this a little bit yes well nick has been very nice to always deal with my q a nick how do i do this nick what am i supposed to uh yeah he had me on the rotary club one time i spoke uh there and uh um and he's just been advising me along the way like i said it's still in its infancy we're just basically preparing

to launch it where we're announcing it really officially and start looking for our first partner so we can um do something do an event basically i'm excited for that thank you so i'm going to be i want to be a part of that somehow okay i just i love what you i mean we talked earlier but it's like this fast fashion there's so many facets to that right it's killing the true artisans it's um them wanting not to deal with what's happening and they're just giving up are retiring or just like like the end of the era for them right but it's also creating these landfills across the world it's creating it's just this mass production of things that are killing the earth agreed and i'm i'm such a proponent of quality over quantity and i teach this

to at least my clients because i'd rather have 10 pieces that would last me 10 years that i can mix and match right you know if but it's like needing the only pieces that are that way to me now are are things that it's custom and like it's what you said was the standard even the person who's made some of these suits which um she is like that used to be the standard where people would go and you would get fitted like they would just take your measurements and boom it wasn't as expensive of course um and now it's that luxury that you talk about exactly and I'm finding when I go shopping for my clients into let's just say Saks or Neiman's or whatever and the quality has gone down significantly it's atrocious it's where i cannot even buy products or shop for them

because i see the shit quality the shit craftsmanship that is happening because it's just mass-produced tell me about the fabric what is happening can i give you an analogy what you just said for me as a as an insider or as someone that understands how clothes are made and when i see things it's like going to a department store and seeing mcdonald's burgers but they're all rapid they're all wrapped in different brands and logos wow okay it's the same thing maybe this guy took a put a cheeseburger in there and wrapped and put frankie's uh burger shop on it and then someone else did the normal thing it's all the same thing and the the emphasis is less on quality and more on having your brand message, having your target segment,

nailing it down, figure out what their needs are. And it's like, yeah, that's all really important. But at the end of the day, you don't want to sell people a piece of crap. And that's exactly what it is. And people don't see it. So it's again, another analogy, imagine growing up and never eating a home cooked meal. And the only thing you've ever eaten is McDonald's. And so when you go to a nice restaurant and they serve you mcdonald's on fine china you think that you're having a great time but the reality is that you don't even know what you're missing out on and that's what it is when i see and the and the sad thing is that we're at a point right now in our history where if things don't radically change that is the way it will be forever we as americans

will not be able to create high quality products and all these designers will come out of school and be forced to order from the same 10, 15 factories overseas, making things that are slightly different, but there's no heart and soul in it. You know, I mean, like for me, fashion is like home cooking. You know, your grandmother made her recipe. It tastes amazing. You take her recipe, you try and do it. It's not the same.

It's because there isn't that heart, soul, experience, love, and, and your ability to actually cook something well, you know, it's the same thing with fashion. It's just, everyone wears a shiny painted trash can. That's awesome. I love your analogies because it really does put into perspective what's happening. What is going on with the fabric? From what perspective? What do you mean? What's going on? What is going on with the quality of fabric? Why is it breaking down after one or two washes? They have mechanized or streamlined the process so much that they have been able to get it to the point where it's like almost nothing.

It's almost like, what is that thing called? Planned obsolescence. It's like planned obsolescence with clothing. I remember when we used to buy fabric when I was a kid now I'm talking 45 years ago my father would make contracts with Japan and he'd buy this amazing fabric and he used to pay back then three dollars and 75 cents a yard for Japanese fabric okay and that was like the cheapest you can get back then it wasn't like it was hard to find something for like a buck today you can actually buy fabric for a buck, a buck 25. Now, my question is, how is it that 40 years later,

everything costs more, right? Everything is more expensive. How is it that the cost of fabric has gone down 75%? What do they do to this fabric? And the reality is that they just make garbage. They don't make anything that lasts a long time. Yeah. It's so frustrating. It is. And like what can we do as a society well oh wait let me before i ask you that like let's talk about the dollar and the three dollars okay okay so okay you shared an incredible stat one dollar spent in the u.s made clothing that generates three dollars locally correct why aren't more people shouting this from the rooftops? Well, I think people are, there's probably two people shouting from the rooftop. Obviously they can't, they can't, no one else is hearing them. But I got

that statistic from like a website of the American manufacturing United States or USA, whatever. And to be specific, it was for every $1 that you spend for a domestic made product, it contributes an additional $1.73 to the local economy. So it means that if there's a buck in the local economy, it will turn into $2.73, almost three bucks. And the opposite datum is if you buy something that's imported, your $1 will become 50 cents in the local economy.

And so the difference is, this is what I tell people, you have a choice to buy something that's made here or buy something that's imported. the difference in your choice affects the economy by 500 percent wow exactly so it's a huge huge impact that people have now i think that most people are kind of like they don't really understand what's the meaning of this like okay that's a nice stat what does it have to do with me right and i usually tell people this lvmh i think sells a hundred billion a year it's insane yeah a hundred billion that's just one of the guys right the other guy the other french guy

i forgot he has like the other 70 percent yeah exactly i can't say his last name so i usually tell people imagine this analogy new york harbor there's a ship and there's all these henchmen and we're all loading cash on this ship on all these ships and half the ships were sending to china and other foreign countries and the other half of the ships were sending it to bernard arnault so it's like why why is it like this is my real question why is it that as americans we feel like a particular product won't sell for that much like you can't sell a sweatshirt for i don't know let's just say 300 400 whatever it may be for you you can't sell it so you have to go and send it overseas so that you can sell it for whatever 100 bucks 50 bucks whatever it may

be why is it that as americans this is our viewpoint but the europeans just raise the price and americans will spend five thousand dollars for a pair of shoes twenty thousand dollars for a handbag you know i mean why is that now i'm not saying there's anything wrong with the french making amazing product but i'm saying why is it that we don't value that for ourselves why don't we value our american why isn't there an american brand i ask people to rattle off the best labels that they heard of uh things that they salivate over and it's all european brands that they yeah I think there is something about being American that was always a little cheap. So whether it was the cars, whether it was our fast food, right?

It was the food. It was just American when you hear that as other cultures too, it's like, oh, quality is not that good. But that's not necessarily true. It's just that we've invested in other countries that we think are quality, right? The uber luxury, like, you know, is Ben, Chanel, Gucci, Hermes. Like, let's spend on that because we think it's quality. And it probably is. But why can't we make anything quality here?

And again, like, throw a brand on instead of, I don't know. Yeah. I want to share something with you. Please do. When we think of luxury fashion, obviously, first on the list is probably France. Second is Italy, right? Do you know that, I think it was Louis XIV, Louis, I was considered, what was he called? The Sun King?

I think the Sun King. Okay. Back then in the 1400s, 1500s, I'm not a historian, so don't take me literally. But basically, back then, the fashion capital of the world was Portugal. Portugal or Spain? Portugal or Spain was the fashion capital of the world, not France. louis intentionally decided that he is going to make france couture and he put all of his time and money and effort into developing that he was actually one of the first venture capitalists

actually he's the one who who turned leon into the textile capital of the world he's the one who developed it yeah and he brought the silkworms from china whatever and he turned it into what it is today it was a very this it was a very conscious decision that he made his court like he is considered to be the one who developed basically haute couture wow and he made his court dress in a wide array of rules when they came to court and a lot of people said that his the court uh many of them basically went bankrupt trying to keep up with these rules of dressing and there were some people even said that it was intentional like he wanted to like have that power but yeah my point is the central thesis here is this is that france didn't just one day realize

oh shit we're really good at what we do yeah they actually work towards it and that's something that we should do wow i 100 agree um i love our conversations i love your passion and your vision, your goals. Is there anything that you would like to tell the audience here that we didn't cover today? Um, well, one of my projects I'm working on is to relaunch the family brand Pierre Labiche, which is the brand that my father created in the late seventies. Um, and hopefully in the next month or two, um, I will do that. I will do that. I'm excited to see what, what's next for you. And I'm always following you and giving you support too. So thank you for being on the show today. It was a pleasure. It's always a pleasure to see you. Thank you very much. I'm

super happy. Sorry. Where can people find you before I forget? Oh, um, well, my social handle is international pleading at international pleading. Our website is at international pleading. So, and if they want to email me directly, uh, if they just answer, if they just email info at international pleading and just put in their attention, George, or I must speak to George and they can get me. All right. Perfect. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah.