America once made most of the clothes Americans wore. So what happened?

The story of American-made clothing starts with cotton in the South — from the region’s role in the global cotton trade to the textile mills that once powered entire communities. By the 1990s, about half of the clothes consumed in the U.S. were still made here. By 2024, that figure had fallen to about 3%. But American textile manufacturing didn’t disappear completely. In our latest YouTube story, we visit one of the last mills in Georgia still making old-school selvedge denim on historic shuttle looms and trace how the South went from the center of American textile production to a small part of the global clothing industry. Watch the full denim episode of "Curiosities of the South" on the AJC's YouTube channel now. Subscribe to discover how the South lost one of its most iconic industries, how Georgia helped launch Japan's denim boom and whether American-made denim can make a comeback. Credits: Video by Fraser Jones | Jordan Pettiford, Javier Loarte, Austin Andries for the AJC, Sources: AJC | Getty Images