Design
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THE
RESTORATION OF AMERICAN-MADE
FURNTITURE WITH A
S T O R Y // 3 3
TEXTILES
// 3 0
FROM THE
REINCARNATIONS RUINS OF KATRINA, CONTEMPORARY
MODERN-DAY MILLINERY W
FA N C Y PA N T S
Made in Vidalia
Vidalia Mills is the only mill in the world which consumes one hundred percent sustainably certified cotton, produced using resources—water, labor, and cotton—from the immediately surrounding area. Photo to the left and top courtesy of Vidalia Mills. Bottom phtoto by Trisha Downing.
VIDALIA MILLS LEADS THE WAY IN SUSTAINABLE AMERICAN TEXTILE PRODUCTION By Christina Leo
C
hina, Bangladesh, Vietnam—all places most familiar to us Americans from the labels on our clothes, our tools, our home decor. These nations have long dominated the international manufacturing industries, exporting products halfway across the world to us—and though the price tags on these products tend to be lower, the environmental and socioeconomic costs have grown, especially in recent years, to be astronomical. Producing enough material at a fast enough rate to make packing and shipping clothing across thousands of miles profitable, it turns out, largely depends on poor quality of life for overseas workers and wasteful 28
energy expenditure. This says nothing of the effects of the lost local industry in communities across our own country. But things don’t have to be that way. What if the future did, in fact, look a little brighter? And what if part of the solution lay, of all places, in a refurbished Fruit of the Loom factory in Vidalia, Louisiana? Vidalia Mills, the cotton textile manufacturer located just across the border from Natchez, Mississippi, has recently made a more visible name for itself during the present COVID-19 pandemic, when it converted much of its production to face masks for civilians and health care workers. Founded in 2014, the mill specializes in performance
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yarns and premium textiles— particularly top-quality selvedge denim jeans—with a focus on sustainable, home-grown production that still competes with overseas countries’ lower labor costs. Under the leadership of Managing Director Daniel Feibus and Senior Advisor Robert Antoshak, the mill has provided more than one hundred new jobs to the Vidalia area, along with industry prestige, and draws clients from high-end denim brands like Imogene + Willie and Raleigh Denim. Even the selvedge looms themselves come with more than a bit of a reputation, many of them Draper X3s salvaged from North Carolina’s now-shuttered Cone Denim White
Oak facility. Rare finds, the looms are responsible for the fine quality threads and jeans produced in Vidalia, and, according to Antoshak, made a touring group of designers tear up a bit upon first sighting them. The little town of Vidalia also has some history of its own. Perhaps you’re familiar with its founder, the colonial Spanish nobleman Don José Vidal. Or perhaps you’ve heard something of “The Great Sandbar Fight” of 1827, which involved none other than famed—if contemporaneously less admired— Louisiana resident Jim Bowie, who was seriously injured when he stepped into the duel between Alexandria natives Samuel L. Wells III and Dr. Thomas
