Couture Craft

A new nonprofit, Closely Crafted, advocates for skilled makers in the fashion industry.

By David Schimke
August 20, 2025

Fall 2025

Craft Communities

Free To Read

Photo courtesy of George Kalajian

Closely Crafted is dedicated to preserving and revitalizing the legacy of quality Made-in-American goods through a commitment to traditional craft. Pictured here: an example of pleating work done by Tom’s Sons International Pleating.

Since the pandemic, a resurgent interest in the handmade has created a little-talked-about human resources crisis in the luxury fashion space, especially in the US, where makers with niche skill sets—hand sewers, leather and lace makers, hand blockers, flower makers, and many others—are retiring or shifting careers without having mentored their replacements. This is partly the result of fast fashion, mass production, and outsourcing that, until just recently, dampened demand for domestically crafted couture. Making matters more challenging, students populating most fashion schools are more interested in becoming designers (a narrow career path in the best of times) than learning a particular skill set that would render them more employable and stock the industry’s bench with specialized workers.

“A shared sentiment in the fashion world is that it’s become more challenging to find talent that can produce quality and really beautiful luxury goods here in the US,” says Gigi Burris O’Hara, a milliner who runs an atelier in New York City’s fashion district. “And that some of the biggest hurdles aren’t price, but people.”

To address the situation, Burris O’Hara launched the nonprofit Closely Crafted, which uses live events and cross-platform storytelling to emphasize the economic and environmental benefits of small-batch American production in fashion and to excite a new generation of specialized artisans at a grassroots level. The organization also facilitates mentorships to ensure generational knowledge is preserved.

“Something that really resonates with me is preservation through human knowledge,” Burris O’Hara says. “In the fashion industry, we have not placed value on the craftsperson. And if we don’t alter that pattern, if we don’t find ways to get young people to learn from those artisans before they retire, we will no longer have anyone who knows how to cut lace, or create unique pleats, or make handmade silk flowers.”

Milliner Gigi Burris O’Hara works on a handcrafted hat.

Photo by Sophie Sahara

Closely Crafted’s founder, milliner Gigi Burris O’Hara.

Photo by Capture This Closely Crafted

Flowers handcrafted in New York’s Garment Center at M and S Schmalburg.
Photo by Capture This Closely Crafted

A tailor sews at Martin Greenfield Clothiers.

One such artisan is George Kalajian, who owns and runs Tom’s Sons International Pleating, a fabric and textile business located in Midtown Manhattan’s Garment District that emerged from lifetimes of commitment. Kalajian’s great-great-grandfather owned a textile mill in the ancient city of Diyarbakir, Turkey. His grandfather played a central role in the expansion of the textile industry in Syria. His grandmother pioneered a pleating technique in Lebanon. And his mother and father came to the US in the 1970s and worked as pioneering pleating contractors and designers.

“There is no way in hell anyone is going to learn what I know in the world the way I learned. There’s no one coming even remotely close. Mainly because my father was so amazing and had been doing it for so long and I was standing next to him my whole life observing,” Kalajian says. “What people need to understand is that the garment center of New York is one century old. So, for one century, all of these immigrants came from other countries that had a craft or skill that was developed in their country for centuries. Not one century. Centuries. So, centuries of knowledge were carried by immigrants to this city, and for 100 years it all cross-pollinated and developed into all of this technique that was spread between them. And it cultivated into an amazing art form that produced high-quality garments at scale.

“And now we’re down to the last of the Mohicans. There’s only a handful of us left that really know what we’re doing; that can make a $5,000 product and sell it to you for $100 or $200, because we actually know what we’re doing. When we’re gone, you’re going to have two options: You’re either going to buy a burlap sack that’s made in America. Or you’re going to buy a pair of socks from Chanel that costs $25,000. Because Chanel is going to be the only company in the world that still knows how to make socks.”

Arguably a bit hyperbolic, Kalajian is not fatalistic, nor is he giving up on the idea that craft can reemerge as a central tenant of the domestic fashion industry—even though, by his count, there are only three or four other makers in the Garment District who still specialize in pleating. Which is why, when Burris O’Hara approached him to consider hosting a paid intern, he enthusiastically agreed to give it a go. “Gigi heard about me and my legacy business, and she knew that the ideology I preach—that if we don’t do something to preserve craft in the industry it’s going to be gone—is aligned with her organization. It was a perfect fit.”

Photo courtesy of George Kalajian

George Kalajian, owner of Tom Son’s Pleating.

Finding an appropriate fit for Tom’s Sons didn’t come as easy. Burris O’Hara sent along several candidates, but none of them made the cut. And the first person who did failed to pan out. As all of this was going on, though, Auden Mucher, a fledgling costume maker and textile artist, kept showing up at Kalajian’s studio looking for work. Her moxie paid off.

“She walked in on her own. And she was persistent,” Kalajian says. “She kept following up and coming back, but she hadn’t been to fashion school and I initially thought, ‘Oh, Auden, you really don’t know anything.’ But then I said, ‘Hey, you know what, there’s this program at Closely Crafted. Why don’t you talk to them? This might work for all of us.’ She pursued the opportunity. We all loved each other. And it just ended up working out.”

Because Closely Crafted helped subsidize the year-long appointment, Mucher was able to keep her job as an assistant editor at an art book company, and Kalajian could afford the time he knew it would take for the training to take—even though his 25-year-old apprentice, who started making costumes for theater production in her teens, came in the door convinced she’d be an immediate asset.

Photo by Capture This Closely Crafted

Hats being trimmed at Gigi Burris Millinery Atelier in New York City.

“Honestly, I think I came in a bit naïve,” Mucher recalls. “I was like, I’ve been sewing for 20 years. I know fabric, I know it like the back of my hand. And I learned a lot in the first few days: the secrets of how pleating is done, a lot of terminology, and I thought, ‘This is cool, I’ve got it figured out!’

“Then, when I was doing it, I felt like I was constantly making mistakes. It was just so delicate and so precise in a way that I hadn’t moved my hands before. It was quite the humbling experience. I felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again for months, and I wasn’t even getting marginally better.

“Then, after the sixth-or-seventh month mark, I noticed that I started to have opinions about what we were doing. Like, ‘Well, if we lay the fabric like this, I think it will come out this way.’ So, my confidence started to grow and my skill level started to grow, to where I knew how subtle changes would impact the outcome of the product. It was not at the level of the people who’ve been doing it for years, of course. But it was a noticeable shift. Now I have thoughts about how I think things should be done sometimes, but every time I pleat something I learn something new.”

The nature of Mucher’s trajectory didn’t surprise Kalajian, who knows it takes years to begin mastering his craft. He’s been impressed by his apprentice’s progress, however, and when her internship officially ended made her an assistant pleater.

Mucher isn’t sure how long she’ll stay with Tom’s Sons, but she’s become “a pleater for life” and, thanks to Closely Crafted, is also an evangelist for hands-on experience.

“It’s so much easier to learn by doing. I didn’t go to fashion school, so I don’t know entirely what those classes are like. But everything I hear echoed in the industry, is that people come out and they have a lot of ideas about design and what they want to do, but very little practical knowledge. And that can be frustrating for people on both sides of it. Because they want to come in and make stuff, but there’s a big knowledge gap. And learning by doing is the only way. An apprenticeship is also far more accessible. You get to be learning on the job versus going into debt.”

closelycrafted.org | @closelycrafted

internationalpleating.com | @internationalpleating

David Schimke is senior editor of American Craft.

Photo courtesy of George Kalajian

A work sample from Tom Son’s International Pleating, where Auden Mucher did her apprenticeship.

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