Making Florence Synonymous With Fashion

[TheChronicle Life & Culture] –Renowned fashion designer Natalie Chanin recently guided a pair of visitors through the vacant Dr. Pepper bottling plant in the heart of her hometown, Florence, located in northwest Alabama. 

Unfurling a set of architectural plans, she shared her vision for the century-old building, situated in what was once Florence’s Cotton District. Within a year, this historical edifice will be transformed into the second home of Alabama Chanin, her sustainable, organic-cotton women’s clothing line established two decades ago. 

Chanin envisions this downtown studio and factory as a vibrant hub, complete with a retail shop, office spaces, workshops, and possibly a café. It will serve as a more prominent extension of her current facility located in an industrial park on the town’s outskirts. She foresees artisans and makers enjoying their breaks, strolling down College Street to grab an espresso at Rivertown Coffee Company or peruse vinyl records at All the Best.

“We have removed these acts of making from downtown spaces where people interacted with one another, where they passed one another on the street or shopped at the same drugstore or got food from the same carry-out place,” Chanin explains. “Bringing this back downtown will reintegrate the act of making into our common culture, offering young people a potential career path. We need to appreciate makers in this nation for the important place they have.”

                            Here to Stay

Natalie Chanin, with her gracious Southern charm, glorious white hair, and gentle drawl, returned to Florence just before Christmas in 2000 with the intention of completing a fashion project and then moving on. When she left as a teenager, she never imagined returning to put down roots in northwest Alabama. Over 23 years later, she remains deeply connected to her hometown.

“I thought I was coming back for a month or six weeks to do a project, and then I was going to return to my life,” she recalls. “But I’ve pretty much been home ever since.”

The project she intended to present at New York Fashion Week involved a 200-piece collection of recycled T-shirts, deconstructed and reassembled with a simple quilting stitch she learned from her grandmothers. Seeking skilled sewers and quilters, Chanin had an epiphany while standing on a Garment District street corner: she would return to Florence to find them.

“I ran a little ad in the local paper that said, ‘part-time hand-sewing and quilting,’ and that first round we got about 60 calls,” she remembers. “The response was huge, and it spread by word of mouth. Someone would see someone sewing somewhere, like at a doctor’s office, and it just grew that way.”

This venture, initially called Project Alabama, evolved into a full-fledged business that became known as Alabama Chanin, a global brand. Natalie Chanin found that the life she intended to return to was right there in Florence, where she and her teenage daughter, Maggie, now live near the University of North Alabama campus. (Her son, Zach, is a chef in Cashiers, N.C.)

“For many years, until my daughter was born, I was living here part-time,” she says. “But once she was born, it changed my life and how I live it.”

                             Life Lessons

Growing up in Florence, Chanin learned early lessons in sustainability from her grandparents, who lived on a farm in the unincorporated community of Central, about 10 miles from town. During visits, she shucked corn, shelled peas, and helped in the garden.

“The house they lived in, my grandfather built,” Chanin says. “Every scrap of food that came across our table came from their hands and their farm. My grandmother made every dress her daughters ever wore. She made the quilts on the beds. They made everything, and I was fortunate to witness this before it changed.”

Chanin’s father ran a construction business, and her mother taught school and later worked as a systems analyst for the Tennessee Valley Authority. In the 10th grade, Chanin moved to Chattanooga with her mother, later earning a degree in environmental design from North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

She moved to New York City, working in the fashion industry for a couple of years and then spending about a decade as a stylist for photo shoots, TV commercials, and movies in Europe. Returning to Florence in 2000, she lived and worked in a house built by her paternal grandfather, adjacent to her maternal grandparents’ home, where she spent much of her childhood.

Her life had come full circle. As Chanin writes in her 2022 book, “Embroidery: Threads and Stories from Alabama Chanin and The School of Making,” she was “astounded at the notion that this project would come to life in my own grandparents’ backyard – the place my journey began.”

                     T-Shirts and Hit Songs

As her fledgling business grew, Chanin moved operations to the Florence-Lauderdale Industrial Park, into a building that had been part of Tee Jay’s Manufacturing Company. In its heyday, Tee Jay’s employed around 4,000 people in Florence and was the fifth-largest T-shirt manufacturer in the United States. During the era when Muscle Shoals was known as the “Hit Recording Capital of the World,” Florence claimed the title of “T-Shirt Capital of the World.”

“At the time all the music was being recorded across the river, they were making T-shirts that were going on tour with all those bands,” Chanin notes. “The whole industrial park here was populated with dye houses and manufacturers and knitters, running three shifts a day in this building.”

Following NAFTA’s implementation in 1992, the Tee Jay’s factory shut down, with many textile jobs moving overseas. The company’s founder, Terry Wylie, became a mentor to Chanin, who moved her business into the vacant space in 2008.

“I always joke that I came back five years after NAFTA was signed and started figuring out how to recreate textile manufacturing in America – or in our community,” Chanin says. “We weren’t developing new techniques but interpreting ancient ones in a contemporary way.”

                           The Next Generation

Over time, Alabama Chanin expanded to include The School of Making, which hosts workshops and offers DIY sewing kits, and Project Threadways, a nonprofit documenting the history and exploring the future of textile production in The Shoals.

“Most of the women who were sewing for us early on were 40 and older,” Chanin says. “There were few young people, indicating a dying craft in our community with no new generation to carry on these traditions.”

Thanks to Alabama Chanin, The School of Making, and Project Threadways, a new generation of sewers in their 20s and 30s has emerged, drawn to sustainable design and cultural preservation.

“There’s a shift towards sustainable design and handmade craftsmanship among younger people,” Chanin observes. “I believe we’ll see this trend grow over time.”

To ensure the continuity of her work, Chanin transferred ownership of Alabama Chanin and The School of Making to Project Threadways in January. This integration under a nonprofit umbrella will preserve her sustainable lifestyle brand for future generations.

“Succession planning has been on my mind for 10 years,” she says. “I realized it should be a nonprofit, as we’ve always reinvested everything back into the business.”

With this model, the nonprofit aims to secure Alabama Chanin as a permanent fixture in North Alabama, maintaining its global reach while remaining locally rooted.

“Hopefully, it will become a lasting part of our landscape,” Chanin concludes, “continuing to operate globally while staying local.”