As New York Fashion Week swings into high gear, Bloomberg Business is featuring a beautiful photo essay chronicling New York’s glory days as an epicentre of American manufacturing in the first half of the 20th century, before globalisation and the availability of cheaper labour in Third World countries turned Manhattan’s Garment District into a shadow of its former self. Today, it is marked by the famous sculptures of a giant button threaded with a needle as well as that of a worker bent over a sewing machine on the corner of 7th Avenue and 39th Street, and gentrification is helping to keep the area relevant. However, the golden era is clearly past, and the photo essay serves as an important reminder of the city’s origins as a style capital, not to mention how its role in employing the city’s significant immigrant as well as female population has contributed to its vibrant cultural tapestry.

View the photo essay here.

Image Credits:
Photograph of racks being pushed through the streets of the Garment District in 1944 by U.S. Office of War Information/Museum of the City of New York, from Bloomberg Business