I was Held Captive In An Underwear Factory (Underwear W/O)
May 02 '03 (Updated May 04 '03)
The Bottom Line Beware of hippies and traveling salesmen!
I've been trying to come up with something for Mimi369 & Jo.com's Underwear Write-off for weeks. After perusing the database for the hundredth time and not finding Hanes or Fruit of the Loom listed, I was about to give up and throw in the towel. Don't give me that bit about the CLs, they can't even add new manufacturers.
Then I read millinocket's entry, "An Ode to Odious Undies." In it she mentioned some bright pink underwear she had received as a gift. She said it was emblazoned with the word bloomies. That rang a bell that made a loud clang in my brain. It said Bloomingdales . . . and once in my distant past I helped create an order of tank tops and T-shirts for that trendy New York department store. I just looked in a box in my locker and found all my sample designs all scrunched up in a plastic bag.
Back in the early 1970s shortly after I came home from Washington DC, I got a phone call from some friends who wanted me to come to Fort Lauderdale and work for them setting up a restaurant. It was the middle of a nasty Wisconsin winter and I got rid of my studio apartment, sold what I could, packed some clothes and the cat and left in the middle of a snowstorm. It didn't work out because of drinking . . .theirs and mine, but that's another story.
I had a place to stay but I needed to make some money. I saw an ad in the newspaper for someone who could paint with an airbrush. I spent many a miserable day working on a spray paint line in a plastic factory when I was nineteen or twenty. Once you learn a skill like that you never forget it. I called made an appointment and faked my way through the interview and subsequent test run. I was to start the next day.
An ambitious young hippie couple was making bad designs on ready-made T-shirts and underwear tank tops. They worked on Hanes garments that they dyed at home in the washing machine with Doc Marten's dyes. The fabrics were ribbed and interlock. The colors ranged from butter yellow to peach, pink, aqua, pale green and a nice khaki color. The colors were heat-set in the clothes dryer and every day there would be another batch of fifty of each color to paint. After the designs dried they were heat-set with an iron. I got paid $75 cash and that was fine because I was broke and needed whatever I could get. In the back of my mind I was thinking of coming back to Wisconsin.
They had some idea of what they were doing but no idea how to do it. They messed up as many shirts as they made. The templates for their designs were made out of illustration board and they cut the designs out with mat knives; one template per color and usually only two colors plus black for detail. When they sprayed with their water-based paints, they ended up with lots of soggy cardboard and ragged edges. I started out repairing their mistakes, which consisted mostly of splatters, smears and oversprays.
It wasn't long before I was head spray painter and designer because I proved that I knew what I was doing. I asked them to get sheets of acrylic plastic and I made reusable, washable templates and cut the designs with a hand-held jigsaw contraption called a CutAwl. We used to cut out letters for signs with one when I was in display.
I went up to four colors per design because I knew that if you sprayed yellow over blue, you got a sort of green, yellow over red, gave you an orange and red over blue gave you purple. I also mixed some opaque colors with the addition of white paint and we had more pastels than we could deal with. Every day I made new designs. Things began to sell.
Before I knew it I was not only living with them in a sort of commune, but we were doing this huge order for Bloomingdales in Manhattan. B-dales said they would accept any designs they wanted to use as long as they were bright and fun. Among other things I did a series of sundaes all topped with whipped cream and a cherry, I did a banana split, I did a slice of cherry pie on a turquoise plate topped with melting ice cream. I made a template with the "Bloomies" logo on it with a little DA for the gal's initials. She was getting all the credit and I was doing all the work. It took about a month to finish the order.
The next thing I knew we were all driving from Fort Lauderdale to Hialeah to a garment factory that made all kinds of things out of knit goods. Mr. S. had a factory in Hialeah and a stable of Cuban and Puerto Rican women who sewed for him. He made anything and everything that could be made of knitted goods, everything from bathing suits to women's underwear and bras. These two manipulators had found someone to back them in their dream of producing a line of kids and teen clothing made of underwear fabrics.
I was going to get an actual living wage from the manufacturer so what did I care. It was better than getting a little bit of cash on the weekend and living rent-free. The gal partner was going to be the head designer and I was to be the assistant. It turned out she even knew less about designing a pattern for clothes than she knew about spray painting which was ZIP!
With my help she put together a line of clothing that could be worn by kids as underwear or sleep-wear or play-clothes. After much discussion while driving back and forth in the car we came up with a name. First it was "Everywear" because that's where it could be worn, everywhere. Then they decided that the name should be Underware, as in what you wear under your clothes and sometimes even wear AS outer clothing. After all, how many kids do you see running around in diapers and a top of some sort?
I did a series of designs based on paper doll cutouts. I had to learn how to make patterns and how to grade sizes, but that wasn't that difficult as these small garments didn't need darts or gussets, they just had to be loose enough to fit around chubby little bodies. There were little boy shorts and tiny t-shirts and a short A-line top with cotton lace on the butterfly sleeves. I did a small A-line dress that could be worn over the shorts. We did a pair of long pants and used soft elastic at all the waistlines.
The female partner in this venture proceeded to sit in the front office, smoke marijuana and yak on the telephone. Ah, the courage that gave her. She thought she could do anything. The next thing I heard was that some buyers were coming to look at the line in about a week. There were about twenty interchangeable pieces that ranged from toddlers to about age 10 or 12 for boys and girls. I had just started on teen stuff and I was wiped out mentally and physically.
By this time I was living by myself. I would just walk over to their place every morning for the ride to the factory. Everyone at the factory knew I was doing all the work and no one said anything. I really felt like someone had taken my head and squeezed it like a grapefruit and tossed it aside . . . not even hitting the wastebasket.
I had it and I wanted OUT. So the morning that they planned to show off with me at a table painting (like a trained seal) I quit. I never went over to their house for my ride and I never heard a thing from them either.
I have no idea what happened when the buyers appeared. They may have gotten orders but there was no one to do the painting. I suppose she could have faked it (she was good at doing that), but the garments she would have messed up in her effort to do it would have done them in. When I called about my final check I heard from the Latina secretary that the one thing they succeeded in doing was to run up a telephone bill of over $2,800. Mr. S. was not thrilled about that at all when he returned from wherever he was and saw the bill. She asked if I wanted to come and work for them but by that time I was ready to get on the train and come home. I couldn't have cared less.
One day when no one was around they came in and cleared out all their stuff. They left like gypsies in the night. So much for my tale of Underware!
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© Ed Grover - 2003
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Member: Ed Grover
Location: Milwaukee, WI
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