The Made in USA movement is alive and well in Richmond, Virginia, where Anthony Lupesco and his team of 10 are busy cutting denim at their workshop. Paper patterns are laid over rolls of freshly dyed indigo; each pair of jeans is sewn by hand from start to finish.
Shockoe Atelier, which was established by Lupesco and his father Pierre in 2012, is one of numerous brands — often menswear labels with a focus on rugged utilitarian workwear — now proudly manufacturing in the US. It is part of a movement to buck the trend in recent years that has seen a 90 per cent decline in apparel manufacturing in the US — and a fall in jobs from 940,000 in 1990 to 136,000 in 2015.
Today, the US imports far more apparel than it exports ($117bn against $22bn in 2016), and Donald Trump’s campaign slogan to “hire American, buy American” has politicised US manufacturing. But many of these labels have been on the Made in USA bandwagon for years. Traditional labels such as Schott, Filson and Danner have long owned US-based facilities, while younger labels such as American Trench are using the expertise of existing factories to create new lines.