Almost no American apparel company makes its own fabric anymore.

The industry works differently now. A brand designs, a contractor in another country manufactures, and the brand handles marketing and distribution.

That arrangement produces affordable clothing and it has emptied out American textile manufacturing almost completely.

There is a company in Portland, Oregon that still runs its own mills, in Oregon and Washington, turning raw wool into finished fabric and then into blankets and clothing.

It has been family owned for six generations.

The obvious question is how that survives when the entire industry moved the other direction, and the answer is that the mills are not a nostalgic burden. They are the reason the company still exists.

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