Rebuilding the T-Shirt
A simple garment. A complete supply chain. A blueprint for what local production can look like when skills, schools, and community connect.
“The T-shirt is just the entry point. The real subject is production literacy — and what happens when a community decides it matters.”
It Starts With a T-Shirt
Not because fashion is the point. Because a T-shirt is the clearest possible example of how a skill becomes a product, a product becomes income, and income — at even modest scale — becomes economic agency.
The cotton was probably grown in Texas. Exported. Spun into yarn overseas. Woven into fabric. Cut and sewn in a foreign factory. Shipped back. Sold at a markup that captures almost none of that value for the community where it ends up.
That’s the current system. It’s efficient. It’s also a one-way valve — skills and value flow out, finished goods flow back in at a premium