Sewing the Seeds: Slow Fashion in SF

While SF once did have a thriving manufacturing base, the apparel factories that supported the city’s large-scale retailers eventually disappeared, supplanted by offshore producers. Then, during the dot-com bubble, skyrocketing rents in light-industrial districts such as SoMa drove most small-scale clothing makers, on which local designers relied, to Oakland, Daly City, and South San Francisco—or out of business entirely. “In terms of manufacturing and raw sourcing, in New York or even in L.A., everyone is right there,” Chaiken says. “If I need a button, there are fifty people to go to just for buttons.”

Couture designer Colleen Quen has also managed to succeed in the Bay Area. But, after twenty-two years working in the fashion industry, she says she’s had to make her own compromises. “I can only hire a few seamstresses, because it’s so expensive and I’m still so small,” says Quen, who relies upon traditional methods of French couture handwork to construct her dramatic evening gowns. “I do everything else, pretty much. It’s hard to survive, but I have a good group of patrons who support me—that’s enough right now.”

Then there’s the issue of media exposure and marketing. “The New York and European press define top fashion—and they aren’t looking to San Francisco,” says Chaiken, who lives in Marin and has a satellite office in San Francisco’s Financial District, but travels frequently and does most of her business through her showroom in NYC. “It depends on what you’re trying to do,” she says, “but if you’re a designer trying to create a national label on this level—and you live here—you still have to go to the major marketing centers to sell and market your product.”

Others in the industry point out that even if the rest of the world wanted to focus on the San Francisco fashion community, they’d be hard-pressed to find it. “There’s no defined retail hub here,” says Cheryl Locke, fashion-journalism coordinator at the Academy of Art University. “Boutiques are scattered throughout so many neighborhoods. From a retail point of view, independent designers would be more successful if there was a central place to find them.”

By Nerissa Pacio