Can Fashion Sell a New Generation on Trade Jobs?

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1:13Hello 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.

1:28Behind 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.

2:09More 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. Thank you for having me again. 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.

2:49In 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?

3:27So 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 Petite Mains, 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.

4:33And 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 investment 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 we our industry I feel really venerate the creative director and they are our rock stars and we kind of like 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.

5:28But there's definitely an issue with making that more glamorous. And I think sadly, the pay is a big reason for that. 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 lot, a whole generation of us towards were, you know, college educated, not and not crafts, like college education, doctor, lawyer, engineer, not even in many cases, police officer or, you know, mailman, like there was just like 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 maybe as a consolation prize you go to a trade school I think that was all happening at the same time how how high would you place visibility in terms of the impact on the trades over the last couple of decades 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.

6:55It'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 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.

7:52But 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 Métis 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. Well, so, you know, the AI bit of it and then also the the share expense that goes with going to college for four years and that's just getting higher and higher.

8:35Those 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 reporting from recruiters in Europe and London specifically is that a lot of those efforts are very localized. So if you're not already in Tuscany and maybe a stone's throw away from some academy that's cropped up by a big luxury house, would you be aware of this? In fact, one of the recruiters, Yvonne, from Spot on Minds, argued that it actually looks quite glamorous to people that are close to it.

9:20Like if you're a, and I don't know, and this might've been different for you, as you said, growing up in France, but if I was a young person living in Tuscany and my grandmother or my aunt or somebody or an uncle, whomever, if I watch them do this work, there's a lot of pride and a lot of people are fascinated by what they can see, but that's not reaching somebody to use Yvonne's words in like Atlanta or Minnesota. soda what's your take on how regional or localized some of the efforts to uh to rebrand or to create these academies and say you're going to attract you know young people or new generation to them like do people really do people really know and is that awareness taking hold beyond fashion's big cities where this work is happening um definitely the same thing happens in france if we think about where Hermès is located.

10:13They are in Pantin, which is the middle of nowhere in the Parisian area. You would never go there to party or to go to a restaurant. Like it's not that kind of areas. And we have the exact same thing in the UK. But I would say what is interesting is that from the BUF Couriers community, we've learned a lot from our HR experts who we interview, who come to our events, and we always ask them questions. And for instance, Mulberry, very recently as actually today this morning when we chatted to them told us that they have their own apprenticeship program and it's based in Somerset in the UK which is like near Bristol so same thing it's very far away from London from the big cities and it's very regional and they said they have received the highest number of applications for the apprenticeship program which is related to leather craftsmanship so they own the largest manufacturer of luxury leather goods in the uk and so that for me is super interesting because it shows there is an interest here and for these young people applying for that apprenticeship it means they are okay with moving to somerset but it all comes down to knowing that these programs exist and the big problem we have with fashion is that information is not really shared among the industry and to know where there's a bursary or a scholarship or know when a specific program is available to you or not super expensive.

11:43You need to be in the know and you need to be introduced to it by someone. And if we look at fashion design courses in the UK, there are so many of them, as we've talked about another time. But on this, they are so expensive. It's 10K if you are British, it's 20K if you come from elsewhere. and then it's even more expensive when you make your own collections if you study at central saint martins you go on to make your own graduate collection but we know that if you want to attract buyers or the lvmh prize you need a really good collection and that means spending even more on really high quality textiles and swarovski pearls and all of that so yeah that regional point is very important you need to be ready to move to that specific location and many people aren't but we we see that there is really a shift ahead in how young people are interested in what they can make with their own hands and we should i think we should be ready to see more of these programs come up and i know that in your piece you mentioned nordstrom and i saw that for that specific program, they received nearly 200 applications, but there were only 15 spots.

12:56So we'll see more and more and more of this coming up. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because there's also, like, you made the point, there's no shortage of places to learn some of these skills. But I think there's also some flaws and maybe how even the young people that are excited about this, how this might be positioned to them. So, for example, the cost is not that small. It's not the cost of a four-year degree. But as you said, it's not cheap. It's not chump change. The other thing is when you hear someone talk about a pattern-making course or a handbag-making course or a sewing course, maybe this is a four-week program, a six-week program, a year program.

13:38That's really short relative to the commitment of a four-year degree. However, it takes decades to master the skills. can you talk a little bit about how you know that may rub against his idea that you know this is a this in the age of ai the cost of a four-year degree you know all that goes into that this is now a solution where you can have a quick route to a career in fashion it's not and i should also mention that nordstrom's program is funded by nordstrom so people take those courses for free just to so there's no confusion about how what that one costs yeah and i actually looked at at Ecole Le Sage, so the School of Le Sage in Paris for the embroidery courses, because I was interested in learning if I'm a young person today and I want to work in an haute couture atelier, how can I do it?

14:28What courses are available to me? And at Le Sage, they have a specific haute couture embroidery course, which is only 150 hours. It costs nearly 10K. And I keep thinking about when I saw that price, once you've done your 150 hours to be a master in embroidery in haute couture you need to continue to do that work on your own and then lend a job which is very difficult and even if you work for Dior or Chanel and you want to be at the top of your game and be on the highest salary so at Chanel that perhaps is a premier d 'atelier the first of the atelier to do that you need 30 years of experience at chanel so it's not an overnight success and i think for a generation that was raised on instant gratification and all of that algorithmic dopamine of finding what you want in seconds and being served what you want and expecting promotions every year it's it will be a very delicate path for them to really see that if they want to make a career out of it and make money, it's about 20 years of experience, if not more.

15:44And by the way, so in the US, one of the data points that I pulled for my story, tailors, dressmakers and custom sewers earn about 45 ,000 a year. That's on average last year in the US. So the economics of this are probably if fashion is going to be transparent or candid about what a person that takes this Guerron is up against. It's not a high starting salary. To your point, it can get higher, but it requires decades of experience. Something that came up among recruiters was the salaries have gotten a lot more competitive, but they're getting competitive at the end of the spectrum where people are in demand.

16:22And that is the people, those are the people that are 20, 30 years in. So I want to talk a little bit about some of the things that can work in fashion's favor here. So salary, the length of time it takes, maybe not so much. It might look deceptively short on paper, but the long game is 20, 30 years. I think some things that Nordstrom, for example, is doing is interesting. So I spoke with one other person that runs one of these programs or the styling program at Nordstrom, and she talked about reframing the job in a few ways. So tailoring, for example, making it less about, you know, hemming a garment and using your hands and more about creativity, styling and sustainability.

17:05So extending the life of the garment. What is your take on sort of this, the power of reframing it and making it more attractive, specifically the sustainability fit to young people like Gen Z say they care about these things. And I'm sorry, I'm being a little shady. They say they care about these things. We hope that we hope they do. But is that valuable as a strategy? I love what they said, because I feel like a big challenge for the luxury industry is for the next few years to really focus on the jobs that those sustainability targets will create. and in our latest big report face to face with the luxury clients we do talk about sustainability and how for many luxury consumers who buy something now they are already thinking about oh in 10 years from now if I resell it it still needs to be in a really good shape the material needs to be really solid and I need to buy something that I know I will be able to resell And so the whole second journey of a product and knowing that you can go back to Louis Vuitton or elsewhere and just ask them to fix it so that you can then resell it is super important.

18:18and we should really think about this as a way to create new roles and new jobs and I think it will attract these younger workers and really make them feel like being a tailor or working on a very specific textile fixing can be part of one of these new jobs birthed by the sustainability targets instead of just thinking of sustainability of oh we need to meet our carbon emission targets or we need to make sure that we don't get fined because we're missing that target. We should really reframe it as, oh, it can be an opportunity to create something new. I think that fashion is going to move the most because they're going to be fined.

19:02That's my vote. I think that's going to be the big driver. But I do agree. I think emphasizing some of this work as a solution for waste is viable, maybe not the headline, but I think that's a viable one. The other thing that I thought was interesting that Nordstrom is doing and other companies do something similar, it's kind of framing this as a means to an end, like the upward mobility part of this. So you don't have to stay in this job forever. I think that was maybe one of the mistakes over the last decade or so of selling these jobs. It's like you can have an amazing career as a master embroiderer or pattern maker, maybe you can have a decent career for a few years doing some of this work.

19:52Like the president of FIT, Jason Shuback, used this. He says that FIT, they tell the students that you're going to drape till you drop. So every course they take or every degree you get from FIT or most of the degrees that you can get at FIT requires you to do the handmaking stuff to learn this. Not necessarily that that's going to be the career that you have. So Nordstrom, other retailers say that they've been like, this can be something you start doing, but it can lead you to something else. So Jessica talked about a lot of their tailors go on to become stylists. She gave the example of someone that started off as a tailor for several years and went on to be like a product developer.

20:33Other people have gone on to be regional store managers. And it's something that they do with their teams that they check in. I believe it's quarterly. It could be monthly, but I believe it's quarterly and ask them like, where do you want to go? So making sure that if you're going to fill the problem of we don't have enough people to literally do our tailoring, let's just be practical. It doesn't have to be this, you know, sexy dream job. It's like, let's get people in here and say, start here and then tell us where you want to go. what's your take on that one effective yeah i love that there are two things that came to my mind when you talked one is that we can try to make these as sexy as possible to reach these young students but if we have someone coming in and we're telling them oh maybe in two or three years we can move on to something else that creates another gap of talent and skills and we're already struggling with replacing people who are 60 plus years old so if we then need to replace everyone every three years it gets tricky and I think the other part is that we obviously think about oh the young talent and the young people who want to join the industry but perhaps we also need to think about people who currently were just laid off in their desk job and who are now looking for a new career and perhaps they are thinking about oh maybe I can just move on from office jobs and focus on something I can do with my hands and have that second, third, fourth chapter of my career in a completely different area in industry.

22:04And I know that in France, for instance, they are trying to do this. When you are unemployed and you have your own coach to learn how to make your CV and apply for jobs, because France is amazing, and they tell you, how about moving on to another industry? And I know someone who's my friend who worked in restaurants, was unemployed, and then got his entire fashion design degree paid for by the government to then go to fashion school, study design. And he was then head of atelier at a small French company that I used to work for in the north of France. So that's also a possibility. We don't have to only focus on the young talent out there.

22:48When we think about careers, we discuss careers in fashion, but also just in any industry, we get very excited and fixated on young people and early career professionals. But as an industry solution, companies are finding more success right now in framing this as someone's second, third or fourth act. In fact, that's what Nordstrom pointed to. And also, by the way, that I should probably clarify that they said many people have gone on to do other things, but most of their tailors do stay in those roles for many decades. I want to sort of put this all back into perspective. So right now there's an opportunity in fashion, theoretically, right?

23:27So far, you mentioned Mulberry. I think you also had Burberry this morning that said that they had some interest in these careers. But so far, fashion isn't really enjoying the same momentum. Other industries, like I spoke with the National Retail Federation for this story, and they said, you know, we're seeing a lot of the momentum in things like truck drivers for a Walmart or Home Depot, HVAC workers, plumbing, electricians, that kind of thing. Pattern making or, you know, hand making skills, let's just broadly call them the fashion trades. A longer game. It's not really enjoying a huge resurgence right now, but there is a new backdrop against which fashion can operate to get some more excitement.

24:18Do you think we get there? Do you think this is going to be a time where we're going to see a meaningful improvement in the interest in fashion skill trades? Or is it going to be an ongoing slow drip? I vote for the latter. I think it's ongoing slow drip. I think AI helps some of this. I think people are getting a little nervous, but I don't know if you saw this clip. It was sometime maybe, it could have been late last year, it might be this year, but the CEO of Lowe's, Marvin Ellison, did an interview or was speaking to students or young people, it might have been a commencement. And he mentioned that in the age of AI, he would encourage young people to consider store jobs that, you know, like basically, you know, I know my job looks amazing, but I actually think you have a better career prospect to go.

25:10If you were to go to the stores, there's always a lot of those roles available. You get the hands on skills, yada, yada. And I think you know how this ends. People didn't love that. people didn't love hearing that don't reach for what has been framed as the big bright shiny object which is the c-suite job or the creative director job in our in our part of the industry or the fashion designer job don't go after that look at this practical really durable stable career path which in many ways maybe fashion doesn't really maybe there's there's much you can do to turn that around but do you see any of this shifting so it's a good question i feel like just like companies will be scared of fines when it comes to sustainability there's a gap now slowly growing in terms of craftsmanship and if these big luxury brands want to keep their prices high and want to keep saying that they are all about craftsmanship and high quality and know-how and that what they do is the best on the market, they won't have a choice.

26:16And so that means they will still need to train people and they will need to train more people in the coming years. There's one thing in a story about watches that we run very recently. One of our freelancers went to Geneva Watch Days and actually wrote this down. And the chairman of Bulgari said something very interested around the decline in volumes and how it's really bad because it's not like you can stop the suppliers and close them down while you wait for the market to get better and then bring them back again he said to restart a brand is possible as long as there are suppliers to restart a supplier especially in watches it's impossible so if we say no now and we do not invest in that craftsmanship the know-how the tutoring the training the schools if we do not do this now these specific skills will die with the people who are retiring in a few years and are not coming back anytime soon so these brands won't really have a choice and i think that's why we saw the big ones really invest in those academies that's why ldmh is doing chanel is doing it aloeva is doing it because they know they don't really have a choice so i'm more on that side of the equation i feel like they will be pushed they will be pushed that the investment is happening and it's probably going to continue to happen as it has to and right now they have some winter their back in the age of AI.

27:53Yeah, on the impact of AI on all of this, I feel like we are expecting AI has an impact on pattern making. And it can automate some of these functions. But we really need to keep in mind that AI can't replicate haute couture embroidery, can't replicate featherworks, it can't really copy what makes luxury fashion and that craftsmanship so unique. And there's one story i always share which is that if you work at lesage in paris and you work on the wedding gown for the chanel haute couture show there was a tradition to embroider a hair of like one of your hair into the gown for good luck and to get married in the year and that kind of like magic doesn't really happen with ai and so we know and we've seen the luxury industry really double down on this so they will need to double down on it when it comes to training as well to make sure that like none of this is replicable by AI.

28:57Also then AI strikes again it's both it's both the impetus to get people interested in crafts but also can maybe take on some of those jobs as well is that a positive note to end on I like to say that we're ending on a positive note I don't know it's a mixed note it's a reality check Dan. It's a reality check yeah. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me again.

29:46Thank you.

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