California Apparel News

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti gave his first address to the local apparel community at an Oct. 14 event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the California Market Center.

“I know that that our textile and fashion industry is a cornerstone of our economy,” Garcetti told the crowd assembled in the CMC lobby. “It creates jobs and expands prosperity. Making sure that we put the recession in the rear-view mirror is my top priority as mayor. But this industry is more than just an important part of the economy, it’s personal for me. My grandfather Harry Roth was one of you. His father, Louis Roth, started a small business during WWI making uniforms for our troops. My grandfather then took it and expanded it to fine men’s suits, defined the California cut, and sold Louis Roth clothing.”

Garcetti recalled visiting his grandfather’s factory in downtown Los Angeles as a child.

“I saw what it was to have a family business, to struggle but also have success, too,” he said. “I know that Los Angeles can make the finest clothes anywhere in the world, we can design the finest clothes anywhere in the world, we can have the textiles that inspire and move the world, as well. I want you to know you have a true friend—a member of the family, so to speak—at City Hall.”

The mayor was introduced by Jaime Lee, CMC president.

“In 1961, at the ground-breaking ceremony for the building, then-Governor Pat Brown called the ambitious structure that we are standing in today an expression of faith in California in Los Angeles and in the economy of the west,” she said. “His words still ring true today. Fifty years, 3 million square feet and thousands of showrooms later, we can verify the tremendous impact that this establishment has had and continues to have on our industry and the city in which it stands.”

Garcetti acknowledged the importance of Southern California’s $13 billion apparel and textile industry to the city’s economy, as well as the industry’s more than 10,000 companies that employ 100,000 people in region.

“I came to the mayor’s office with a clear mandate from the people of Los Angeles: to put the recession in the rear-view mirror, to put Angelenos back to work,” he said. “With wages rising in Asia and dramatic fluctuation in fuel costs, we have circumstances on our side. Combined with our natural advantages; with our status as a creative capital in film, music, TV; and the nation’s leading center for contemporary art, the technology explosion that we’re enjoying here—this is now one of the best cities to be a tech start-up—the intersection of fashion— and with these strengths, I think, we’re poised to put Paris and Milan in the rear-view mirror, too.”