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Activists hope to save Garment Center

By Magdalene Perez | Special to amNewYork

July 18, 2007

Fabric mongers are stitching together a message: Unite against gentrification!

Responding to an influx of offices and hotels that have driven up rents in the fashion district, business activists in the midtown neighborhood have declared Wednesday "Save the Garment Center Pin Day."

Appropriately, business owners are taking up needles to promote the event, designing fabric pins embroidered with the "Save the Garment Center" logo.

"I think the manufacturers themselves did not have a real awareness of the situation," said Larry Geffner, the owner of a pleating business and member of a Save the Garment Center coalition. "This is to alert and educate the manufacturer about what is taking place."

Even as fabric and trim suppliers, cut-and-sew contractors and fashion company showrooms lose their leases, the city is considering rezoning to allow offices, the coalition said.

The garment district today is a shadow of what it used to be 50 years ago, when the streets were clogged with European immigrants pulling racks cloaked with fabrics, embroideries and finished garments. Before the influx of offices and hotels, cheap imports and outsourcing to China and other countries had already significantly scaled back business.

But a small nucleus of fabric and button sellers, fashion studios and contracted sewing workers remain, Geffner said.

"It's about saving the community that exists," said Geffner. "It's the backbone of the fashion capital of the world. Without it the whole thing will come tumbling down."

A Fashion Week organizer said that assessment may be a bit of a stretch, but lauded the effort to protect what has long been a vital part of the fashion design business in New York.

"The fashion industry is one of New York's stellar, marquee industries," said Fern Mallis, vice president of IMG Fashion, the company that owns Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. "Working with us to keep the shows and the showrooms and the design studios in New York is important to the city's agenda."

In shops and design studios, the word about Save the Garment Center Day had yet to spread, but many were receptive to the idea. Richie Rich, one of the founding designers of the fashion company Heatherette, said it's important to remember that garment district workers are paid an equitable wage compared to work that's done overseas.

"It's always been family businesses," Rich said. "It really is the heart and soul of what fashion design in America is."

Textile vendors, meanwhile, have felt changes in the fashion district not in their heart, but their wallets.

"We're struggling right now to pay our rent," said Jenet Hatami, who sold just $120 of fabric at her shop on 35th Street Tuesday.

If business doesn't pick up, Hatami said she doesn't know what she would do.

"I'll have to go on welfare," Hatami said. "I'm not joking."

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