Can Fashion Sell a New Generation on Trade Jobs?

The Business of Fashion Podcast

This episode explores the growing crisis in skilled labor within the fashion industry, as master artisans retire without successors. With U.S. tailoring employment down 30% over a decade, brands like Nordstrom are investing in

Key takeaways

• The fashion industry faces a critical shortage of skilled artisans due to generational gaps and lack of recruitment into trades like tailoring and leatherwork.
• Historical shifts—such as conglomerate takeovers, offshoring of manufacturing, and the devaluation of trade education—have eroded interest in craftsmanship careers.

Main topics

• Skilled labor shortage in fashion
• Rebranding trade careers for Gen Z

Notable quotes

"If we say no now, and we do not invest in that craftsmanship... these specific skills will die with the people who are retiring."

Conclusion

Fashion must act now to rebrand skilled trades as viable, prestigious, and future-proof careers.

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:08) Hello and welcome to The Debrief from the Business of Fashion, where each week we delve into our most popular BOF professional stories with the correspondents who created them. I'm Senior Correspondent Sheena Butler-Young. Speaker 1 (0:23) Behind every luxury handbag, bespoke suit, and couture gown lies an intricate value chain powered by skilled artisans. Yet, as master craftspeople retire without successors, fashion is facing a growing shortage of skilled workers. The numbers tell the story. Tailoring employment in the U.S. has fallen roughly 30 % over the last decade. And Nordstrom, the largest employer of tailors in North America, with nearly 1,500 alteration specialists, is working to rebuild that pipeline. funding tailoring programs at FIT, Seattle Central College, and soon ASU FIDM. At the same time, skilled trades are enjoying renewed interest. More young people are considering careers in plumbing, electrical work, and construction as they question the value of a four-year degree and what generative AI could mean for entry-level white-collar work. The question for fashion is whether it can tap into that momentum and convince a new generation to consider careers in tailoring, pattern making, and leather work. Joining me today to unpack this shift is BOF Commercial Features Editor, Dan Hastings. Dan, welcome to The Debrief. Speaker 2 (1:30) Thank you for having me again. Speaker 1 (1:32) So Dan, let's start with the basic problem here. It's probably... like the most poorly hidden secret that fashion has long needed skilled craftspeople and has struggled to find them. In fact, one of the interesting things I heard in reporting this story was from a recruiter in Europe who said, you know, she goes to ateliers and to these like factories and steps out on the floor. And it is very obvious when you look on those factory floors that. This is a skill set that skipped multiple generations, that a lot of the people that are doing this work are very visibly in their 70s or even older than that. There are very few people out there that's 20s, 30s, 40s. So you can see that it's leapfrogged a whole generation or two. What do you think is the inherent problem here? Like, why is fashion struggled so hard to attract people to these jobs? Speaker 2 (2:22) So it's a really good question. And I feel like we perhaps need to start at end of the 90s, early 2000, when these independent couture houses were being bought out by LVMH and Kering. I feel like the Petit Mans, as we would call them in France, those amazing craftspeople who were helping building the first dresses and... tailoring from Yves Saint Laurent and Dior and all other amazing people were mostly women. They probably did apprenticeships instead of going to fashion design school. They were not really well paid. And I feel like this shifted when these big conglomerates came in and a lot of the manufacturing was then offshored to Asia and elsewhere. And we kept the offices in the West, in the US, in the UK, in France, and we had the stores, but we didn't really train that next generation of handicraft people. And so that's why now we end up with these amazing luxury houses filled with talented people who are in their 50s, 60s or more. And they do have apprenticeships and we know they have made investments in creating their own. academies and programs and modules. But we really left with a generation of people who go to fashion design school because they want to be the next Karl Lagerfeld and not necessarily because they want to be the next amazing tailor. And that's due to many things. But our industry, I feel, really venerates the creative director and they are our rock stars. And we kind of forget about the production side. perhaps because it's less glamorous for some. I find it very glamorous. I find it very interesting when I watch Dior on TikTok showing how they make things. But there's definitely an issue with making that more glamorous. And I think, sadly, the pay is a big reason for that. Speaker 1 (4:31) I want to double click on a few of the themes that you mentioned. The visibility thing. I think is interesting. The history you just described is also fascinating. What I think about as a millennial is around the 2000s and the 90s, or just as a child, like the kind of career that parents, teachers, people in the community steered a whole generation of us towards were college educated, not crafts, like college education, doctor, lawyer, engineer, not even. in many cases, police officer or mailman. There was just a general lack of glamour that started to be associated with these more traditional careers. And then also with the trades, it was kind of like, if you don't go to college, you may be as a consolation prize, you go to a trade school. I think that was all happening at the same time. How high would you place visibility in terms of the impact on the trades over the last couple of decades? Speaker 2 (5:33) What you just described is exactly what I lived through in France as well. And if you went to what we call professional high school in France, it was kind of like admitting that you were not really good at math and literature. Which is not the case at all. It's just a different kind of skills. And we are seeing now with obviously AI stepping into the scene and many people leaving university with degrees but not finding jobs. We are seeing now a change of narrative, especially coming from our policymakers, I would say, and our politicians are trying to rebrand these trade schools or these apprenticeship programs. to make them more exciting for that younger audience. And I think with fashion specifically, the glamour of working in an office for a fashion brand or working in a really nice luxury store isn't really met with the exact same visibility when we think about working for a fashion brand on the pattern-making side. or on the supply chain side, or on choosing the textiles, which is a real shame. But I don't really know how brands can work on this piece to make it more exciting. I feel like LVMH has tried to do that with their academy and everything they do. I think Chanel is really good at that when they do their Chanel Métier d'Art show and showing that like, oh, we work with Lesage, and Lesage is very famous for their embroideries, and they do this and that. But it's really tricky because for some of the young people out there, they still dream of a career in a nice office working at a computer. Speaker 1 (7:19) Well, so, you know, the AI bit of it, and then also the share expense that goes with going to college for four years, and that's just getting higher and higher. Those two things do represent an opportunity to reframe some of this. But let's talk a little bit about... what fashion has already done and maybe why that's not working. So you mentioned a couple of these academies that have popped up over the years. Something that came up in my