“The term ‘fashion’ originates from the Latin word ‘Facere,’ which means ‘to make,’ and describes the manufacturing, mixing, and wearing of outfits.” Wikipedia
Today, there is a huge problem with all manufacturing (making) industries in America.
In the New York Times, Letters, May, 2025, under the title: “Filling Jobs, and Bridging a Blue-Collar Gap”: John Ladde, a senior advisor at the nonprofit Jobs for the Future, and administrator at U.S. Dept. of Labor, writes: “The workplace must become an extension of the classroom, where students earn while they learn…. Employers must design youth apprenticeships, partnering with schools, and embedding learning into the job itself.” Farah Stockman’s article about manufacturers workforce challenges examines manufacturers’ struggles finding skilled workers. Schools and colleges are no longer training for these skills. Manufacturers went overseas to get the work done, or hired immigrants here, who had the skills. Now, Trump is even taking skilled immigrants away.
John Ladde is so wrong to say “The workplace extension of classroom” and what Employers must do. It is more the other way around: The classroom needs to be an extension of the workplace, or at least work together, feeding back and forth, simultaneously. Many employers already have apprenticeships, and not necessarily from schools or universities. I had apprenticeships in my manufacturing business, and most were not from schools or colleges, because I had such difficulties with the arrogance of students. Ladde is arrogant, and colleges/universities very authoritarian, to think they know better than businesses, especially in manufacturing. They do not, and I know quite well from my 60-years of experience — dealing with both. There is so much that colleges must learn from business of what learning works, and what learning doesn’t work. Colleges/universities must stop believing they rule the world. Yes they are getting hit by Trump. But it is an authoritarian hitting at other authoritarians.
However, “earn while they learn” is excellent. I wrote a story on this: ”Earning while Learning: A Solution to Exorbitant Costs for College.” In it I quote John Dewey, philosopher: “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”
As my readers know, I built a very successful high fashion design and manufacturing business for 20 years. I give the most credit to having started as a stitcher in garment factories at age 16 in 1949. The 1950s, 60s and 70s was a time of the authentic fashion clothing industry, that sold to the Middle Class. Although I hired some experienced stitchers, I still had to teach them the fine points of better fashion clothing, and to be receptive to my intense creativity, not just in styling but in production engineering. In the 1980s it was more difficult to get quality stitchers. I hired fashion design graduates from schools and colleges, and trained them. Some of these graduates had arrogant attitudes, wanting power, although satisfied with wages. They made it uncomfortable, and I sold my business to a menswear firm that could better handle their arrogance.
As I loved teaching, I taught at some colleges and schools in the Boston area. They were all part-time while I proposed and won some engineering design grants in fashion engineering design and technologies, from the National Science Foundation. Reflecting back at those students I hired, a good part of their arrogance was from being taught at fashion schools and colleges, that manufacturing and industrial stitching and pattern making was below them. Only their creativity mattered. And I know that creative sketches are a “dime a dozen” (as said at a MIT Enterprise Forum) if without making skills, especially in industrial manufacturing.
Since the 1980s, I have been observing that manufacturing has worsened, along with bad attitudes about it. In the articles above, John Ladde talks about what the employers should do. But nowhere, do I read what the schools and colleges, should do to help the manufacturing sector. They are pushing new technologies and AI. Technologies have come about since the Hunter/Gatherers, the farmers, the weavers, and sewers with needles. Although I monitor many AI stories in the newspapers, and on Medium, and have written stories on AI. I have seen nothing that helps fashion industry.
In fact, I was distraught hearing about a fashion class at a Quincy High School was going to be faded out, and I met with the teacher to see if I could help. I was shocked that the class had been renamed Fashion Technology. The only technology is “digital”, and that is just in the marketing and selling of fashion, not in the making of fashion. Also, some head at the school, said to the teacher: “Do not call this a sewing class.”😩 Sewing is the foundation of the Fashion Manufacturing Industry.
I did read something that I thought would be hopeful: “Clash of Trades Combines Reality TV with Manufacturing. … reflects a renewed emphasis on the manufacturing sector and the value of skilled people who work simultaneously with their heads and their hands…. Some schools and colleges are enthusiastic enough about manufacturing technology to be part of the show.” Unfortunately, upon deeper investigation, there was nothing on Fashion, or even clothing.
Another thing to mention is that I have been giving some scholarships to some of the fashion schools and colleges in the Boston area, for some past years. There has not been even one student who went on into the authentic fashion industry for the Middle Class, as there were in the past century. I no longer will, unless there is some proof from any one of them, that they have prepared and done something in designing in manufacturing, and pattern engineering.
Thank you for reading, and love to all my readers.