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Title: Interview with Bill Kaiser
Description: Interview with Bill Kaiser about his life and his company, the Bill Kaiser Company, which was a supplier to the Midwestern garment industry. He discusses his family's business importing sewing machine parts in New York, and starting his company in Kansas City after moving from New York in 1971 supplying local manufacturers with sewing machines and parts, pressing equipment, and other supplies. He notes that by 1971 manufacturing had largely moved out of the city into smaller regional towns, and says that he believes a resistance to new, faster technology and automation was a factor in the decline of the local industry. He also discusses the assembly line process of clothing manufacturing and the variety of machines and other equipment required for production, and the American garment industry's shift to overseas manufacturing.
Date: 2010-11-30
Object Type: Video Recording

Title: Interview with Michael Lerner
Description: Interview with Michael Lerner about the Kansas City garment industry and his family's company, King Louie. He recounts his father Morris and uncles founding the Lerner Cap Company, later changing the name to Lerner Brothers Manufacturing and going into production of military clothing at the start of World War II. After the war they shifted to sportswear, and later, to bowling shirts under the name King Louie, as his uncle Victor Lerner was a professional bowler. He discusses how the company grew to encompass bowling alleys and other businesses, shifting to overseas manufacturing and imports, and eventually buying back the brand from a venture capital firm in 2006 and re-establishing the business as an American-made, union labor firm that manufactures uniforms and promotional garments.
Date: 2011-03-07
Object Type: Video Recording

Title: Interview with Suzie Aron
Description: Interview with Suzie Aron about her family history in Kansas City's garment industry, beginning with her grandfather Hyman Gordon's immigration to Topeka, Kansas, and later to Kansas City. She discusses Jewish prevalence in the industry, and her family's Frances Gee Garment Company which focused primarily on uniforms for nurses and other woman-dominated professions - a direction taken because it was easier to work with all white fabric. She discusses the company being one of the first with overseas production facilities, having opened factories in Puerto Rico and Japan, as well as other aspects of the company's operations and union relationships, including her experience working on designing and branding uniforms for the fast food industry, work which eventually became the focus of the company.
Date: 2011-02-07
Object Type: Video Recording

Title: Interview with Mary Lou Chalmers
Description: Interview with Mary Lou Chalmers about her experience working in Kansas City's garment industry from the late 1950s through late 1970s.. She discusses enrolling in the fashion design program at Kansas City Art Institute, as well as taking courses at Fanny Fern Fitzwater School of Fashion Illustration and the Isabelle Boldin School of Fashion, and then working in design and pattern-making at area garment companies such as Nelly Don and Gay Gibson. She describes the process of designing and making clothing, her experiences at numerous companies, the perks of working at Nelly Don, and times that her designs were featured in national magazines. She also discusses the decline of the garment fashion industry in the 1970s, the homogenization of shopping, and the shift to manufacturing in Asia.
Date: 2010-05-07
Object Type: Video Recording

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