Video: ‘There Would Be No Fashion Without Immigration’

By Jamilah King Jun 25, 2014

Over at Fusion, Jorge Rivas paints a compelling portrait of how immigration has shaped American fashion. From Jewish designers like Donna Karen and Calvin Klein, whose parents worked as sewers and tailors in New York City’s garment industry, to new designers like Alexander Wang and  Jason Wu, immigrants have long helped shape America’s visual culture.

As Thuy Linh Tu, a professor of social and cultural analysis at NYU, says in the above video: "There would be no fashion without immigration in this country." Later, Tu remakrs, "We take a lot of things that are coded as American for granted. We fail to sort of look behind the label to see who’s actually producing these ‘American’ goods."