Going American: On the hunt for clothing made in the USA

Ok, I admit it. I have been really slow in starting my blog. Between kids, household chores and daily life I haven't made the time to post my findings. I have made a huge effort to try and pay attention to everything that I buy and I have also gone through most of the items in my home to see where they were made, making mental notes of everything I found.

I want to start off talking about clothing. I am a person who looks for quality over quantity when when it comes to what I wear. I do lean towards Italian made shoes and handbags. I also love to shop sales and designer outlets to avoid paying full retail prices on designer goods. To me these higher priced items don't really compete with the low quality cheap items from China you find on the shelves of Walmart and Target. On one hand I hate that dollars of mine going to workers in other countries instead of the US workers but I can't find one US shoe company that makes the shoes I want. I do feel that there is a difference in buying high end items from Italy and France where a worker is paid on the same scale that an American worker would be, versus using the people of China as extremely low wage slaves. So is it bad to buy from other countries that are on an equal pay scale as us? I don't feel it is bad, as long as the majority of your purchases are from the US and you avoid buying things from China.

Trying to find clothing that is made in the US can be so frustrating! Being a very petite person, it is already hard enough for me to find clothing that I love in a style/color I like that actually fits me well. Now with my added 3rd rule of "it must be made in the US", it is much more difficult. But I know it is not impossible. I just have to work at it. I went to TJ Maxx today to do some shopping. The news is not good. Rack after rack, every single clothing item was either made in China, Indonesia or Peru with a few other random countries thrown in. The only brand of clothing I found on the racks that was made in the US was "Robin K.". I actually have not purchased any new clothing for myself in the past few months so I was happy to find a cute summer cardigan from "Robin K" that met all of my requirements. The fact that it was marked down to $12.99 was an added bonus!

I recently discovered a really great way to find lots of items that are US made is to go to Nordstroms website and enter "Made USA" in the search box. Lots of goodies!

Probably the worst offender when it comes to made in China merchandise is the girl's clothing store "Justice" (formerly know as Limited Too stores). Everything in the store from tops to dresses, shorts, pajamas, jewelry, right down to the underwear is in made in China.

The good news about clothing? Jeans!! One of my favorite clothing items!! Going through my closet I found that all of my favorite brands of jeans are made in the US. I give the following brands a big thumbs up: Rock & Republic, Lucky Brand, True Religion, J Brand, Seven For All Mankind, Citizens of Humanity, Chip & Pepper, Earnest Sewn, Arden B., and AG Jeans (Adriano Goldschmied).