Tour Fashion Factory & Create a souvenir

Our guide was engaging and informative. She showed our 14 year old and us many samples of fabric and then photos of the final designer dresses that had been created. We all enjoyed ourselves throughout the tour. It was fun to design the bags and t-shirt.

My son is a senior apparel design student and he wanted to learn more about the “real” apparel/fashion industry from a long time professional. We booked the tour with Samanta not completely sure what he would learn but we signed up. We met Samanta at the Sewing Man statue in the garment district right on time and we were excited that we were the only people in the tour that day. We introduced ourselves and explained our son’s goal to understand the industry better as he prepares to start his career. Sam understood our goal and adjusted the tour to help us get the most out of it. She showed us a full embroidery factory and explained how the industry has changed in the last 3-5 years. She was able to speak the same language with my son and show him how sketches are brought to samples and discussed how those samples get mass produced. We visited a couple of specialty shops to understand how you source some of the items to produce a sample piece. We visited a patterns, samples, grading and marking shop and talked with the owner and his team which was amazing. They were so welcoming to us and provided some really great insights. Sam’s 25+ years of experience was so valuable in helping my son get real answers to questions that you can’t learn in a classroom. We ended the tour in a huge, 3 story fabric provider where we talked about fabric sourcing and great ideas for collaboration with large brands. We really valued our time with Samanta and the insights she shared with us. She adapted the tour to provide the most value to my son which was tremendous. In looking back I wish we would have communicated our goal for the tour earlier as I think Sam would have been able to set up even more sites and have more information for us. That said, even with short notice Sam was able to deliver a great tour that really helped my son get some real world apparel industry knowledge. I would highly recommend taking a tour with Samanta if you are an apparel/fashion student looking for insights into the REAL industry.

Loved getting to talk to someone that is part of the industry.... it opened my eyes to how BIG the industry is. Really a niche tour that I enjoyed (and we loved our souvenir!) Our tour guide was fantastic and answered so many of our questions. Would highly recommend for any one interested in thr fashion industry.