This Rochester Fashion Co. Dresses Mitt Romney, Bob Costas, And Could've Dressed U.S. Olympians

Article location:http://www.fastcompany.com/1843835/this-rochester-fashion-co-dresses-mitt-romney-
bob-costas-and-could-ve-dressed-us-olympians
July 27, 2012
Tags: Innovation, Design, Why Here, Mitt Romney

This Rochester Fashion Co. Dresses Mitt Romney, Bob Costas, And
Could’ve Dressed U.S. Olympians
By Emily Badger

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Chuck Schumer’s suggestion sounded a little cheeky. Two weeks before the start of the Olympic Games,
the senior senator from New York proposed we ditch Team America’s uniforms [2] and remake them from
scratch, as quickly as possible, on American soil. Ralph Lauren, it came out in the thick of a Washington
heat wave, had manufactured the things… in China! (This outsourcing plotline is not new to the 2012
Olympics, although it caught new political momentum at the confluence of a recession and an election
season.)

An American-born company, with an American-based manufacturing facility, Schumer promised, was
waiting at the ready. The idea invited double takes, and not just for the apparent impossibility of stitching
so many iconic suits in time for the Opening Ceremony. The senator’s campaign suggested another subtext
(and, surely, this was his intention): Clothing is still manufactured somewhere in America? And in the
withering Northeast industrial center of Chuck Schumer’s back yard?

“There is a little bit of a surprise,” says fashion designer Joseph Abboud, the president and chief creative
officer of HMX Group [3]. “‘Rochester, New York?’”

The label will outfit all of NBC’s on-air announcers for the Games.

That is, in fact, where Hickey Freeman [4], the HMX-owned label Schumer had in mind, has been since the
late 19th century producing menswear and dressing politicians--Schumer among them. (“We’re politically
correct," Abboud says. "We dress Chuck Schumer, and we dress Mitt Romney.”) Hickey Freeman is the
vestige of a long and powerful manufacturing history in Rochester. But it’s also the embodiment of the idea
that it still makes sense to produce some things in America, even as many of our clothes, widgets, cars,
cameras, electronics, and household items are now manufactured overseas.

“All people think about is Eastman Kodak,” says Sandy Parker, the CEO of the Rochester Business
Alliance [5]. She was talking, of course, about Rochester’s homegrown, 100-year-old photography giant
that filed for bankruptcy [6] earlier this year. “[People] hear we’re from Rochester, and they see the
headlines on Eastman Kodak, and they have no idea what else is here. They probably view it as a ghost
town.”

At its peak, Kodak employed 62,000 people in the Rochester area. Bausch + Lomb and Xerox were also
founded here in the industrial era of the Erie Canal, giving Rochester a pretty enviable concentration of
some of the 20th century’s most influential companies. As recently as three decades ago, nearly 30% of the
local workforce was still working in manufacturing. Now, the number is about half as big, and the city is
taking pains to diversify the local economy [7]. Nevertheless, Hickey Freeman insists that its
manufacturing will remain in Rochester. “Hickey Freeman was, quite frankly, one of the unique
manufacturers that continued to have a presence here,” Parker says, “and largely because of its
workforce.”

The company, first started as a family business in 1899, has long served as an entry point into the city for
immigrants with skills in sewing and tailoring. And it is that talent pool, with local institutional knowledge,
that the company still needs as it continues to stake out an explicitly American identity between
mass-produced made-in-China clothes and over-priced made-in-Italy cachet.

Ralph Lauren has argued amid the Olympic controversy that it’s obviously an American brand (who else
plays polo?), even if all its clothes aren’t produced here. HMX, meanwhile, was acquired several years [8]
ago by an Indian company, although in parsing the fashion geopolitics of “made” vs. “designed” vs. “born”
in America [9], the jobs in Rochester certainly feel real, and Hickey Freeman has remained in town
precisely because of the workforce that exists there to fill them.

There is innovation behind the fact that Hickey Freeman figured out how to keep manufacturing in
Rochester amid so much outsourcing.

“Even with all of the efficiencies and the technology, there is still a need for the craftsmanship of the
workforce,” Abboud says. “They have to be craftspeople, not just factory workers. When you’re making
something in soft goods, like a beautifully tailored suit, it’s not spinning out sprockets or anything.”

Hickey Freeman produces in Rochester about 150,000 “units” a year (industry-speak for a single item like
a suit jacket), and each sport coat requires as many as 300 individual processes (sewing a button, pressing a
sleeve, inserting a shoulder pad) handled by an individual at a machine. In some ways, there is innovation
behind the fact that the company has figured out how to keep doing this in Rochester amid so much
outsourcing.

Hickey Freeman did nearly leave town a decade ago, when it had to upgrade the factory--called “the
Temple”--it has kept for years in the same location on the northeast side of town. The state helped anchor a
$7 million aid package [10] to keep Hickey Freeman (and about 650 jobs) in Rochester. Since then, and
under new ownership, the label has also updated its style to be a little less conservative.

“If there were a criticism of [Hickey Freeman] for the last 25 or 30 years, it was that there wasn’t a lot of
innovation,” Abboud says. “This factory has always had the capacity of doing extraordinary things in terms
of innovation, making softer construction, working with interesting fabrics, really creating not just a suit to
cover a guy’s body, but to create fashion. So the capability has been there. What the factory really needed
was an infusion of new thinking, new ideas, new products we could create.”

Now the company dresses younger professionals, in addition to a lot of middle-aged politicians.But alas,
Hickey Freeman will not, this Friday, be dressing the U.S. Olympians. The idea was probably too
far-fetched (and Hickey Freeman isn’t particularly expert at making ladies’ skirts). But, if you look closely
enough, the label will be outfitting all of NBC’s on-air announcers for the Games. And, well, Bob Costas is
going to get a lot more airtime than water polo team captain Tony Azevedo [11].

“We’re not trying to keep it alive because it’s archaic and historic,” Abboud says of the label. “We’re
trying to keep it alive and doing well because it’s a relevant product.”

Follow the conversation on Twitter using the tag #WhyHere [12].

[Images: courtesy of HMX; Romney: Flickr user Gage Skidmore [13]]

Links:
[1] http://www.fastcompany.com/why-here
[2] http://www.schumer.senate.gov/Newsroom/record.cfm?id=337238
[3] http://www.hmxgroup.com/
[4] http://www.hickeyfreeman.com/
[5] http://www.rochesterbusinessalliance.com/
[6] http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/eastman-kodak-files-for-bankruptcy/
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/nyregion/despite-long-slide-by-kodak-rochester-avoids-
decay.html?pagewanted=all
[8] http://www.indiainfoline.com/Markets/News/Hartmarx-Corp...-Compelling-acquisition-for-SKNL
/4673860345
[9] http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/debate-rages-in-congress-public-over-us-olympic-
uniforms-being-made-in-china/2012/07/13/gJQA74VriW_story_1.html
[10] http://wxxinews.org/post/7-million-aid-package-keeps-hickey-freeman-rochester
[11] http://www.usawaterpolo.org/NationalTeams/PlayerBio.aspx?ID=3
[12] https://twitter.com/#%21/search/whyhere
[13] http://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/6468745971/in/photostream/