Made-in-Seattle cult fashion brand turns 50

SEATTLE — Tucked down a Seattle driveway next to an architectural salvage yard lies one of the fashion world's most coveted manufacturers of down garments. Although you wouldn't find a Crescent Down Works jacket in a Seattle shop window, the brand has a cult following among Japanese fashionistas, regularly conducts business at international fashion trade shows and ships its wares to luxury boutiques in France and South Korea.

Today the small company is little known locally compared to heavyweight hometown brands like Eddie Bauer and Filson. Unlike its larger peers, Crescent Down Works does something almost unheard of in the U.S. clothing industry, especially for outdoor-oriented garments: It makes all of its products here.

While the vast majority of U.S. brands have outsourced at least some of their manufacturing overseas, Crescent Down Works has quietly chugged along through 50 years of sewing, stitching and stuffing — a vestige of the city's once-thriving garment industry and one of only three domestic down manufacturers left nationwide.

Along the way, the family-owned company has cultivated an enviable reputation in the fashion world for quality craftsmanship and a willingness to collaborate, often on unconventional patterns. As the under-the-radar brand celebrates its half-century mark by dipping into its archive to reintroduce classic vests, parkas and sweaters, that stubborn commitment to "Made in USA" has become self-reinforcing, though retail headwinds are forcing at least some concessions to modern business practices.

"Our longevity only serves that narrative of us being high quality," said company executive Annie Michelson, the daughter of founder Anne Michelson, during a factory tour. "We do good work, but also the more we're in business, the more there is this lore that people are really attracted to. People love our story."Eddie Bauer crash course

The story began in 1969, when a fresh-faced Washington State University graduate returned to her Seattle hometown looking for a job. Scanning the University of Washington student center job board, Anne Michelson saw an Eddie Bauer listing. The homegrown outdoor apparel company sought a candidate to set up its down lab where goose and duck feathers would be tested for authenticity and cleanliness.

While Michelson's English degree required some convincing for the hiring manager, she eventually landed the gig and earned a crash course in the down garment industry from one of its leading luminaries. At the time, the proud Seattle-born clothing brand was approaching its 50-year mark. The Skyliner down jacket, which outdoorsman Eddie Bauer invented in the 1930s, sits in MOHAI's permanent collection.

Michelson learned the ins and outs of down supply, cleaning and manufacturing — in addition to her lab, some 100 sewers worked in the building. It was the heyday of industrial stitching in Seattle, often with an outdoors bent, from Therm-a-Rest sleeping pads to JanSport backpacks.

After three years, Michelson struck out on her own. But not because she had a eureka moment about how she could make a better jacket. Her motivations were driven more by the 1970s counterculture, less by today's Shark Tank-fuelled zeal for entrepreneurial big ideas.

"I just wanted to work for myself, combined with loving to climb and hike," she said. "I had no business plan. My impetus wasn't to make money. I wanted to support myself and do something that was fun."

Michelson made her first down garment, the North by Northwest vest, on a Treadle sewing machine. Today they retail for $353 and up. Back then, she gave them away to friends. She incorporated the business in 1974 and moved operations into a University District loft. Customers trickled in from word-of-mouth and classifieds in local media. Orders from outside the Pacific Northwest were rare. She got married and had two kids, who grew up around the whir of sewing machines. The cottage industry, and a supportive partner, allowed her to eke out a living and spend time with her family.

In the 1980s, Michelson started making parkas. Crescent Down Works went as far as advertising the 8000 Meter Parka in Backpacker magazine, but she never aspired to become the next North Face or Patagonia.

"I've never been much of a capitalist," she said. "My aversion to commercialism kept me from growing. My mindset was: Whatever business comes to me will be how I move forward."Milan and Tokyo calling

Crescent Down Works moved its operations around the city as leases ran out. In the mid-1980s, Michelson was working out of her second-story Pioneer Square studio when a fashion buyer from Milan having lunch at Trattoria Mitchelli spotted a jacket in the window and tracked her down.

For two years, Crescent Down Works was a hot brand in the Italian fashion scene and Michelson made multiple trips to Italy selling wholesale to high-end boutiques. While the infatuation with made-in-USA parkas didn't last, it was a hint that her simple, durable style might have a wider audience than Pacific Northwest hikers and climbers.

The real breakthrough moment came later in the 1980s, by which point Crescent Down Works had moved up to Capitol Hill. Back then the neighborhood was home to a small cluster of outdoors brands anchored by REI at 11th Avenue and Pine Street in the years before it opened its downtown Seattle flagship. Feathered Friends, which still makes its down sleeping bags, bedding and parkas in Seattle and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2022, also had a shop in the vicinity.

During a prospecting trip to Seattle, Japanese fashion buyers touring Capitol Hill discovered Crescent Down Works. As the Japanese economy peaked in the late 1980s, demand soared to upward of 6,000 pieces annually.

"Japanese consumers are very picky about quality and the story of the brand," fashion buyer Marvin Yusada, who's represented Crescent Down Works for 25 years, said via phone from Los Angeles. "No other company I know of makes nylon down jackets in the USA."

While Crescent's previous customers were interested in warm clothing for hiking and climbing, the new Japanese market sought down garments as streetwear fashion. Orders came in for outré designs using three or more colors in a single jacket or vest, or mixing solid prints with patterns. As a small, nimble factory, Crescent hasn't flinched at such requests, cementing a passionate following among high-end Tokyo clothing stores like Beams.

While Yusada's sales to Japanese retailers ebb and flow — last decade's $100,000 annual wholesale orders have dwindled to $20,000 per year as the yen has weakened against the dollar — he said it's one of the only brands he's ever worked with that never fails to fill at least some orders annually.

"Basic never gets old," he said of the brand's enduring appeal. "They keep their theme: Made in USA, quality products."Passing the baton

Almost 40 years after they became big in Japan, Crescent Down Works still fluctuates with the strength of the Japanese economy. Last year they made about 3,200 pieces, but with a weak economic forecast this year in Japan, the company has seen fewer orders. Shops in Paris and Seoul are outpacing Tokyo to stock the brand's $750 parkas.

When the yen collapsed in the early 1990s, it was only Michelson's other business Cafe Paradiso (today the home of the Caffe Vita roastery) that kept her afloat. (She also owns five Seattle buildings whose cash flow supplements Crescent in lean years.)

But Crescent's reputation grew in fashion and entertainment circles, landing collaborations with Los Angeles fashion label Freecity and Nashville-based denim brand Imogene + Willie. They've also made custom pieces for filmmaker Sofia Coppola and as a gift for Lady Gaga. The brand also counts Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood as a fan, and has had a jacket featured in "Stranger Things" season four.

Crescent benefited from a domestic bump in the 2010s when heritage menswear became popular among American consumers — "that milieu of wood floor men's stores that sold Burberry, pipes and whiskey" in Michelson's description — and even landed a collaboration with J.Crew.

Emergence as a bona fide profitable business generated steady employment for a dedicated team of sewers, mostly from the Vietnamese and Vietnamese American community, whose tenure averages 10 years. The longest-employed sewer has been with Crescent for 30 years. When Filson made cuts to its local manufacturing in 2011, Crescent head sewer Ngoc Lam Pan enticed several of the brand's top sewers to the factory. Their talent is evident in the products' durability — Crescent Down Works will repair its garments for life, and well-loved jackets arrive in the mail after years of wear.

Now Michelson, 79, has welcomed the next generation into the business — her kids, Adam, 45; and Annie, 42 — who are bringing their own ideas.

For example, although today Crescent Down Works is stocked locally by Seattle boutique Windthrow and previously sold nationally via e-commerce site Huckberry, Annie has a pessimistic view of the future of retail.

"Wholesale is a difficult and declining business," she said.

Annie joined Crescent Down Works in 2014. Five years later, she launched an online shop to sell direct-to-consumer. It has posted continual year-over-year growth, but for now remains less profitable than wholesale. (Crescent declined to share numbers.) She also hired patternmaker Samantha Pak, a graduate of Seattle College's fashion program, to bring more fashion industry expertise in-house, and enlisted a creative agency for the first time to more actively market Crescent Down Works as a heritage brand.

While Adam has floated the idea of moving the family business' production offshore, which would significantly reduce labor costs and allow for a lower price point, shedding the Made in USA label would potentially be bad for business.

"I just don't think that it's right for this brand," said Annie. What's more, in keeping with her mother's spirit, it wouldn't be right for her.

"Sitting in an office and directing an overseas factory?" she said. "I just wouldn't find joy in that."