Ohio Knitting Mills
LITERARY CLIENT
The story of Ohio Knitting Mills is really one of a family owned and operated factory that was, in its day, America’s knitting mill.
Cleveland, Ohio was once second only to New York City as the nation’s largest apparel manufacturing center, and the Ohio Knitting Mills, founded in 1928, grew to become one of America’s largest knitwear producers. The Mill made garments for such iconic department stores as Lord & Taylor, Sears, Roebuck and CO. and Montgomery Ward, and revered labels like Pendleton, Van Heusen and Jack Winter as well as lesser know ones like Queen’s Way to Fashion, Petti, and Eastmoor.
Starting right after World War II, the Mill began to save and put away one or two samples of each garment from their production. Our retail store in Brooklyn, NY was created as the opened time capsule of this very archive: a remarkable collection of perfectly preserved, never-worn, Mid-Century garments, and relics of American industrial craftsmanship.
The Ohio Knitting Mills took up an entire city block and at one point, employed over 800 union workers. From the sublime to the everyday, the items in our store are an impeccable cross-section from its halcyon days, 1947 -1974, when the mill’s production and creativity were at a peak- knitting up caps, capes, sweaters, shirts, vests, dresses, and pants with bold colors, inventive patterns, quality materials, innovative techniques and a good dose of a strong Midwestern work ethic. Our Brooklyn store is offering these remarkable artifacts in two categories of product: our Premium Vintage line – exceptionally rare pieces that are one or sometimes few of a kind, and our Limited Edition line - canceled or never shipped orders of which we happen to have multiple, but nonetheless limited amounts of a particular style.
Around the time the Ohio Knitting Mills began winding down operations in 2004, the owner of this store, Cleveland-based sculptor Steven Tatar, befriended the Mill founder’s grandson, who had then been running the family business for the previous 35 years. Gary Rand was looking for advice on what to do with the treasure trove his family’s business had systemically saved and stored. Having a talent for marketing and brand building and the heart of an artist, Steven quickly recognized the unique and vital importance inherent in these “design artifacts” and set about finding an appropriate forum to publicize their qualities. With the idea that “things get made in Ohio and brands get built in New York,” Steven, with the blessing of Gary, opened shop on Smith Street in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill neighborhood in October, 2006.
While our Modern historic collection is considerable in size, we will eventually have no more to offer. In fact, our Brooklyn store proved to be so popular, that we had released and sold almost all of the vintage garments we allocated to this retail experiment, and so we closed the store in April, 2008, almost one year early than we had originally expected to sell out. However, Ohio Knitting Mills original Premium Vintage and Limited Edition collections continue to be available for sale online at www.ohioknittingmills.com, and at our special trunk show appearances in select cities around the U.S., such as San Francisco, Portland, Austin, Boulder, and Chicago, and at the flagship store of United Arrows, in Tokyo. And in the near future, we will be launching a line of new clothing and accessories based on and inspired by our original MidCentry modern pieces and their Heartland Industrial Craftsman legacy, as well as offering new accessories made from textiles produced at the Mill in the 50’s-70’s.
Virgin Vintage, Heartland Made- Ohio Knitting Mills.
Steven Tatar Bio:
Steven Tatar combines slumped, cast, and carved glass with stone, and metal to address mechanical and industrial considerations of mass, balance, fastenings, and fabrication. An ongoing parallel series of work evokes botanical forms and landscapes, both topographical as well as dream-like and intimate. He has studied at Cornell University, Pilchuck, Penland, and Haystack schools, and taught throughout the U.S. and Europe, including at The Alaska Center for the Arts, Kalamazoo Institute of Art, Vermont Carving School, Studio Art Center International in Florence, Italy, and the Exploratorium of San Francisco.
Mr. Tatar holds a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art. His work is in the collections of The Corning Museum of Glass, The Contemporary Collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art, and The Albuquerque Museum, as well as corporate collections at KeyBank, GTE, and American Greetings, amongst others. He is the recipient of awards that include an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, American Institute of Graphic Arts Design Excellence, and a Silver Medal from the Interfaith Institute.
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