Interview with Mel Mallin about his experience with the Kansas City garment industry. He discusses his start in New York, his work with Maurice Coat Company in Kansas City in the 1950s, and his later purchase of the All Packaging Company box business and the Manhattan Sponging Works in the late 1960s, a fabric processing company. He shares stories about changing size labels on clothing to flatter customers, the majority Jewish ownership of local garment companies, and recounts other local garment manufacturers and designers, their specialties, and their owners and operations. He also discusses the later conversion of the Garment District buildings into offices and apartments, including including his own 1983 conversion of his box and packaging plant into the first residential loft building in Kansas City.
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