Sustainability Is the New Black at the Industrial Sewing and Innovation Center

By Hour Detroit

If there’s one thing Detroiters know how to do best, it’s leading the nation — and even the world — in developing innovative strategies that elevate different industries.

In the early 1900s, Detroit’s Ford Motor Co. transformed the world of auto manufacturing by doing two things: implementing new technology and introducing ways to improve the lives of its employees. The company did this by creating the first moving assembly line able to mass-produce an entire vehicle, cutting the time to build a car by about 11 hours, and by increasing its workers’ wages to $5 a day while also decreasing their work hours. These tactics improved production, ensured employees were able purchase a Ford vehicle, and improved employee retention. Other companies across the country quickly followed suit.

Now, over a century later, it seems another manufacturing industry is benefiting from Detroit’s influence: fashion.

Not only is the fashion manufacturing industry — primarily fast fashion — responsible for about 10% of global carbon dioxide emissions and 20% of the world’s water pollution, but millions of employees around the world are working in unsafe conditions, resulting in the deaths of thousands in just the past decade — all while they live below the poverty line.

In 2022, the Southern California offices of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division investigated several local contractors in the garment industry, finding one that paid its garment employees $1.58 per hour.

However, like the auto industry, the Industrial Sewing and Innovation Center’s CEO and president, Jennifer Guarino, says, fashion manufacturing can be reshaped into a more sustainable and safer industry by doing two things: investing in new manufacturing technologies and training people to use them.

“We really have to invest in technology and doing things different so that we can assign the low-skill, low-wage jobs to automation or robotics and reserve high-wage, high-human-skill jobs in our industry for people,” Guarino says.

ISAIC, a nonprofit organization that opened its headquarters above Carhartt’s Midtown Detroit flagship store in 2020, is a national resource dedicated to helping those who want to produce garments responsibly. It offers the Fundamentals of Industrial Sewing and Production course, the United States’ only nationally recognized standardized sewing program. The course was created by Deborah Vandermar, who is “one of our industry’s leading experts in academia and training,” Guarino says, and the co-author of Beyond Design, a step-by-step guide on apparel product development.

The seven-week program comprises approximately 200 hours of learning the fundamentals of different types of textiles, how to operate three types of industrial sewing machines, how to interpret technical documents and illustrations, and the basics of manufacturing principles. Since the program is nationally recognized, it serves as the prerequisite to the Department of Labor apprenticeship program, which participants can also complete at ISAIC. Over the course of 12 months, the paid apprenticeship at ISAIC offers on-the-job training and experience operating emerging and sustainable technology that is at the forefront of promoting the return of domestic manufacturing.

Some of that technology includes a pin felting machine that’s able to transform textile waste into marketable products (ISAIC’s goal is to repurpose 1,500 pounds of scrap material by midsummer) and a 3D knitting machine capable of producing ready-to-wear items like hats and bags.

Once an apprentice is done with their training, there is a wide array of career options available for the taking. Some are hired on as full-time sewing operators at ISAIC; others use their training to create their own design brand; and some go on to work for other companies, including in the auto industry, where they’re hired to upholster the interior of vehicles, and for well-known fashion designers, like Tracy Reese. Wages are $15-$22 per hour for sewing operators, and the average wage post-apprenticeship is $15-$16 hourly.

Guarino sees ISAIC as a trailblazer like Ford Motor Co. in its respective manufacturing industry, but she says the main difference between how the two operate is that ISAIC relies on partnerships.

“This is why I left the for-profit world of fashion, because I wanted to work somewhere that had broad impact that wasn’t constrained by working for one brand,” Guarino says. “And that requires creating really strong partnerships and alliances.”

Guarino’s background makes her the perfect fit for this role. In 2013, the Minnesota resident was recruited by Shinola to join the brand as its vice president of leather and help create a system where it could design and manufacture goods in Detroit. She had already done so 10 years prior as co-owner of J.W. Hulme Co., a struggling nearly 100-year-old St. Paul, Minnesota-based leather goods retailer she helped restructure into a direct-to-consumer brand that designed, manufactured, and distributed everything locally.

“It was during that time that I really became committed to reenvisioning what these industries could be in the U.S. and started really looking at the people that work in it and how undervalued those skills are,” Guarino says.

ISAIC has partnered with organizations like Fashion Revolution, which has a shared goal of creating a sustainable fashion manufacturing industry that’s safe for the environment and employees, and the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute, whose mission is to educate those who want to work alongside advanced manufacturing technologies.

Since 2020, ISAIC has graduated over 115 Fundamentals of Industrial Sewing and Production students at its Detroit headquarters and 316 students in the eight other states where the program is licensed.

Detroit native Emery Jones, who owns his own designer brand called EMLE, finished his apprenticeship last December and is appreciative of the environment ISAIC has created that allowed him to harness his skills.

“Being able to work and learn at the same time, and then finishing a shift and being able to test out my ideas, … just having the opportunity — I’m super grateful for that,” says Jones, who showed me during the interview the pants he’d created with the felting machine.

There are hundreds of designers living in metro Detroit, and this nonprofit serves not only as a resource to nurture their talents but also as a beacon to people across the country who want access to emerging technologies and custom training, and Guarino can’t wait to see what they will do.

“Some of it we can’t even conceive of yet,” she says with hopeful eyes, “but just the fact that they can see [what’s available at ISAIC], know it’s here, and do what they will do with it is pretty cool to imagine.”

This article was published by Hour Detroit February 18, 2025. ISAIC is a member of SPESA.

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