Maurice Malone launches Brooklyn denim workshop for domestic jean making

The point was not to teach a basic sewing lesson. Students first watched professional jean construction, then moved into fit samples, corrections, garment assembly, and finishing a pair of jeans on their own. The course cost $2,500 for the full run or $315 per session, with enrollment kept limited so the class stayed small and hands-on. For anyone who shops denim by wash alone, the lesson was practical: the difference between an ordinary pair and a serious one often lives in the seams, the rise, the topstitching, and the way the fabric is handled on industrial equipment.

Malone built the program around a familiar gap in fashion education. He has said online tutorials are often incomplete or misleading, and that many interns from major fashion schools arrive with little or no experience on specialized industrial machines. That complaint carries weight from a designer who started his namesake line at 19, earned a CFDA Perry Ellis Award for Menswear nomination in 1997, and now serves as creative lead for both his own line and Williamsburg Garment Company.

The workshop also landed inside a denim industry that has spent decades thinning out in the United States. The U.S. International Trade Commission said in a 2022 working paper that domestic denim production has been dwindling since the mid-20th century, while global suppliers, especially in Asia, now dominate the chain from fabric production through cutting and sewing. Rising labor costs, machinery investment, skilled labor shortages, and the pressure to move fast have made domestic production harder to sustain, which is exactly why Malone’s class reads like workforce development, not hobby instruction.