Labor Day and fabric share more history than you might imagine. From the days of Betsy Ross to the first Labor Day celebration in New York City in 1882, America was a country of makers, and fabric and fashion were at the heart of American life.

Decades before that first Labor Day, women working in the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, were already walking off the job and taking to the streets. Women like mill worker Harriet Hanson Robinson—and later garment workers Clara Lemlich, Rose Schneiderman, and Pauline Newman—were destined to become a powerful force in the labor movement—and ultimately change the fabric of American life.

Women who sewed played a central role, organizing and striking for better wages, shorter hours, and safer workplaces, helping transform not only working life but women’s place in American society.

So this Labor Day, I’m thinking about the many hands behind the fabrics and fashions we love—and the generations of makers whose skill, courage, and hard work are quite literally woven into American history. Every time we thread a machine, lay out a pattern, and make something with our own hands, we carry a little of that history forward.

INCLUDES ALL FULL-PRICED FABRIC