Cloth and clothing were once spun, woven, and sewn by hand as part of a cottage industry before a series of 18th century British inventions got the Industrial Revolution underway. The flying shuttle, spinning jenny, water frame, spinning mule, and power loom are long gone. But the textile industry, which shipped $84 billion worth of products in 1997, still relies on spinning fibers into yarn and weaving yarn into cloth -- but much more efficiently. To remain competitive in the face of cheap foreign labor, the 26,000 US textile companies have collectively spent about $2.5 billion every year since the early 1980s on updating machinery. The modern system of ring spinning to simultaneously rove, twist, and wind yarn is slowly being replaced by an even faster system of open-ended rotors. Today’s shuttleless loom uses a bullet-like projectile that grasps the thread and shoots it through the cloth’s warp or a burst of air or water that propels the thread. New technologies detect and prevent time wasters such as yarn tangling, cloth breakages, or lost thread ends. Modern technologies have contributed to the slow but steady growth of top textile makers such as Milliken & Company, Springs Industries, and Burlington Industries.

Textile manufacturers have improved business strategies as well. For example, since jeans are still a staple of American garb and heavier fabrics are well suited to factory automation, it’s no surprise that many large fabric producers, including Cone Mills, Burlington, R.B. Pamplin, and Avondale, all produce a lot of denim. To give another example, as apparel-related textiles prices deflate, manufacturers are producing higher-value home and industrial textile products. Large companies have diversified their product lines, while smaller companies such as Pillowtex (home textiles such as bedding and towels) and The Dixie Group (carpets) concentrate on serving the growing markets for home furnishings and automotive interiors.

The 20th century development of man-made fibers, which are chemically synthesized polymers, modified natural polymers, or glasses, has remade the industry. We take such things as "wrinkle-free" and "colorfast" for granted. E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company introduced a host of today's synthetic fibers: nylon (an instant success when it was introduced in 1939 as women's hosiery), acrylic, Orlon, Dacron, and spandex. DuPont also bought the US patent for polyester after it was developed in the UK in the 1950s. Because man-made fibers now account for some 60% of all apparel fabrics and 80% of all home textiles, companies such as Guilford Mills, Delta Woodside Industries, and Dyersburg have adjusted their textile product mixes accordingly. Unifi, one of the more successful yarn manufacturers, relies almost entirely on synthetics, and Malden Mills Industries represents futuristic fabrics with its Polartec "climate control" textiles.

In the 1800s, the discovery of gold in California first popularized store-bought clothing: Miners needed sturdy work clothes but usually were without the skills to make them. Levi Strauss & Co. made its mark selling riveted denim pants to men headed westward. Today the US apparel industry produces $80 billion worth of goods (including fabricated textile products such as curtains, home furnishings, bags, flags, and auto interiors and seatbelts). Levi Strauss is the #1 US apparel maker, though it has lost its leadership of the US market for men’s jeans to VF, the maker of Wrangler and Lee brands.

The modern US apparel industry is still struggling up from its last downward cycle in the early 1990s. The US market in many ways is maturing, for consumers can only buy so many textile goods. The industry is hampered by the difficulty of selling a single product through different distribution conduits: Department stores don't want a brand that is selling in discount stores. Additionally, few brand names cross several consumer categories. For example young people don’t buy “old people's” clothes (and vice versa), Levi Strauss doesn’t make business suits, and Jean-Paul Gaultier doesn't make jeans. This is why apparel companies use acquisitions to circumvent the long road to cultivating a new brand. For example, Sara Lee made several apparel company purchases -- Hanes and Playtex (underwear) and Champion (athletic clothing) -- all widely-known names. Few apparel makers can dream of imitating Polo Ralph Lauren’s success in being all things to all people: suit designer to the swells, sportswear and jeans maker for the masses, and home decorator for the brand conscious.

Most alarming for the apparel industry is that consumers seem to have lost much interest in fashion. Americans’ propensity for dressing down is a trend still shaping the apparel industry. Companies such as Levi Strauss, VF, Kellwood, and Russell, which all make casual sportswear, do fairly well in this marketplace. Nautica's designer sportswear featuring the "classic American look" does even better, as do the laid-back private-label lines of retailers Lands' End and J. Crew. However, too many T-shirts and jeans have translated into threadbare profits. Fruit of the Loom, a top basic apparel maker, is only one of many companies that has had to tighten its belt until it hurts. Fashion's fickle. Mossimo went from hot to flop when it tried to go upscale even as demand for its pricey sportswear cooled.

The market for women's manufactured apparel didn’t really get started until WWI, when women first began to work outside of their homes. It still lags behind men’s apparel: An estimated $14 billion worth of women’s blouses, dresses, and suits were shipped in 1997, compared to an estimated $16 billion worth of men’s shirts, ties, pants, coats, and work clothes. Many leading manufacturers in women’s apparel caught the 1970s surge of women into the workplace. For example, Liz Claiborne caught the wave with its women’s business suits, and Jones Apparel Group found a niche with suits priced somewhere between the extravagant and the moderate. Though female consumers are beloved by manufacturers for their willingness to update wardrobes, the market is so competitive that profit margins hang by a thread. Donna Karan, the company headed by the popular designer, found that tight control of expenses was more important to the company’s bottom line than hemlines.

Women’s apparel has become too tight for many companies’ bottom lines as women spend less time and money on clothes shopping. Those companies that offer mid-priced, sporty apparel that can double as casual work wear -- such as The Limited's lines -- have benefitted from this trend. But the other end of the scale, couture, has suffered badly. Supposedly, 3,000 women in the world have money enough and the inclination to buy luxury pret-a-porter. That's hardly a large market. Givenchy and Christian Lacroix (owned by LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton), Yves Saint Laurent and Oscar de la Renta (owned by Sanofi), Gianni Versace, and all the other venerated fashion houses are counting on their names and, more important, strong ready-to-wear and perfume sales to save their beautiful but slowly sinking ships.

In only one area does women’s apparel demonstrate fairly consistent high product values and growth: underwear. An estimated $4.5 billion worth of women’s and children’s undergarments (more than half of which came from bras alone) were shipped in 1997, far outselling men’s $727 million worth of underwear shipments. Sara Lee (Playtex and Wonderbra lines) is #1 in bra sales, followed by Warnaco (Calvin Klein and Olga bras). Even apparel giant VF, which pioneered women’s rayon and nylon lingerie, has clung to its Vanity Fair line, and Fruit of the Loom, known for men’s BVDs, started expanding its women’s lines in the 1980s.

Casual Fridays at the office has had somewhat encouraging results for apparel companies in one way: Even as sales of women's clothes have slipped, menswear sales have risen. Hartmarx (#1 manufacturer of men's tailored suits), Phillips-Van Heusen (maker of the top-selling Van Heusen dress shirt), and others from the halls of men’s tailored haberdashery are now fitting their fashions to the more casual lifestyle. Hartmarx sells Tommy Hilfiger, beloved by young urbanites from all walks of life, and Phillips-Van Heusen relies heavily on its many sportwear lines, including Gant and Izod. Century-old Abercrombie & Fitch frolicks on the beach with young folks now.

Shoes and accessories (including hosiery, hats, gloves, scarves, costume jewelry, purses, belts, watches, and sunglasses) allow consumers to demonstrate individuality while wearing mass-produced clothes. De rigueur until the 1960s, hats and gloves now tend to serve more as functional than fashionable garments; conversely, many people buy sunglasses such as Ray-Ban (from Bausch & Lomb) or Oakley for fashion, not function. Certain companies, such as Gucci Group and Kenneth Cole, specialize in accessories, but most others, such as Guess?, license their names to accessory makers to enhance their fashion lines.

Just as Ross Perot predicted, NAFTA has created a giant sucking sound. In the clothing business, it's not the sound of Mexico stealing US jobs (though that is happening) as it is the sound of Mexico stealing US business -- from China. For many years, under US tariff laws, most US apparel companies have sent items overseas for partial production and brought them back to the US for finishing, only paying duties on the value added by the overseas work. China was historically the US's main source of work, before Mexico, aided by NAFTA, usurped the title in 1996. (However, China remains the world's largest shoe producer and the main source of footwear imported by the US.) Under the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement of 1995, apparel and textile quotas are being gradually eliminated by 2005, and firms are responding by cutting down on domestic manufacturing. For example, NIKE markets shoes but does no manufacturing, and Sara Lee and Fruit of the Loom are closing many plants. The danger of outsourcing is that manufacturers have less control over overseas factories, some of which badly exploit workers. NIKE, Guess?, Walt Disney, and the Kathie Lee Gifford apparel line retailed in Wal-Mart stores have all been associated with sweatshop manufacturing at one time. Back in the US, manufacturing is increasingly streamlined. The push is on to speed up communications between shippers, textile mills, warehousers, and apparel makers through electronic data exchange systems, reducing materials that are warehoused for a long time and allowing just-in-time delivery to retailers, so that best-selling items are quickly replenished. The tasks of cutting, sewing, and quality monitoring are also being automated.

Clothing imported from foreign manufacturers accounts for half of the apparel sold in the US. China, Mexico, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Dominican Republic are responsible for nearly half of the $43.1 billion in apparel and textile products that the US imports each year. Turnabout being fair play, US apparel companies are starting to market their wares in Asian, European, and Latin American countries, where (thanks to global media) the American look is gaining popularity. US textile manufacturers such as Cone Mills are also hiking abroad.