Jeans made in New York City
NEW YORK (FOX 5 NY) - Jeans, made right here in New York, in a factory smack in the middle of a retail store on Mercer Street in SoHo. 3x1 Denim invites customers into the process to make their own jeans from scratch.
Scott Morrison, the founder of 3x1 Denim says it’s a really unique experience and something most people don’t get a chance to see in their lifetime. Scott has been in the denim business for over 20 years, first with Paper, Denim & Cloth, then Earnest Sewn.
He started his third line, 3x1, eight years ago. Scott says 3x1 is a manifestation of all the knowledge he’s collected over the last 20 years.
He shares that knowledge with tour groups like the class from FIT that was visiting during our shoot. Normal denim, Scott explained to them, is sewn with seven to nine stitches per inch.
At 3x1, they sew 13-15 stitches per inch. And they sew a whole lot of denim. Scott says they currently have about 70 different versions hanging on the wall, but they’ve had over 1,100 denims pass through their retail store over the last eight years.
You can buy jeans made from that denim straight off the rack at the 3x1 store or at department stores like Barney’s, Bergdorf Goodman, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, and Saks starting at $195, all made with the highest quality denim.
Scott says they source selvedge denim, which is vintage shuttle loom denim, so it’s a very narrow width fabric, about 28-30 inches.
It’s a type of denim that was produced in the late 1800s all the way to the 1960s, he says.
Want something even more special? You can customize a pair starting around $525. With custom jeans, Scott says, you come in and pick the fabric, the garment, and the style you’d like to make.
Then you go through the process of picking out the trim items, the pocketing, etc 3x1 will build it for you.
For $1,600, you can join the ranks of LeBron James, CC Sabathia, or the Nets’ D’Angelo Russell and go bespoke, creating a made to measure pattern just for you.
Scott says he’s had some fun moments with people like CC, and is a big Yankees fan. Those top clients create 1 of 1 jeans, with their own personal label. Scott says they had a client come in who rides bikes and motorcycles all the time.
He wanted to have darts built in to create ease into the knees. That client? Actor Justin Theroux. Scott says it was an easy thing for them to do, and something they enjoy a lot.
Bespoke and custom jeans make up about half of the revenue at 3x1’s NYC store, all made here by hand.
Scott says they only make about 2,000 pairs of jeans per year. On average, they have one person sewing each garment. That person will do about 2.5 pairs of jeans per day.
No matter what you spend at 3x1, the approach is the same. Let the customer come in and be part of the process.
Scott says people constantly think they’re crazy, but he believes that in order to help people understand the process, you really need to pull back the curtain and show them.
3x1 is located at 15 Mercer Street, New York, N.Y. 10013