I have a Made in the USA shirt!
March 10th, 2008 | by Paul |The ongoing process of me realizing that no one in the US makes a damn thing anymore is constantly stymied by reality.
I’ll find a small company that makes the greatest potato chips I’ve ever had or recall the trip to Iowa my family made when I was a kid to pick up the hand-crafted table they had ordered years before.
And now, for the first time in years, I have a shirt that was made in the US of A. Here it is.
It’s made by Filson and I don’t care for it much.
Allow me to explain. It’s comfortable and is made of some of the softest and most pliable wool I’ve ever felt. It’s high-quality craftsmanship, durable (if dry clean only) and fills me with pride that there is a clothing company from my country that didn’t choose the easy route and contract with overseas sweatshops.
On the other hand, it’s sort of dorky. Massive chest-pockets.
I could rock it if I were fly-fishing, on a horse or tending a crackling fire in a Manitoba cabin, but for bumming around Logan Square in Chicago … eh. I plan to wear it indoors a lot. Whatever. Quasi-hipster Chicagoans are not their target market anyway.
I got the shirt from my very tall, very skinny friend Nathan, who said it never fit him right. As he very politely put it, I’m “broader” so it might fit me better. It did, damn it.
Then I decided to blog about the shirt. I needed a picture of it (see above), so I went to Filson.com and totally stole it without attribution. Take that, intellectual property laws!
On the site, I saw that the shirt was priced at $147.50.
Holy crap.
It sucks that we live in a country where people have to support lousy business practices just to get by. A working mom and dad with a couple of kids need to buy the cheapest shirts possible or the family simply won’t get by. They’re not going to Filson, no offense to the very praise-worthy company.
By nature of being screwed by the system, regular folks in America have to support an economy that screws people overseas.
The rich get richer and we’re footing the bill, one shirt at a time.