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Danny Glover Calls for Boycott of Hugo Boss at Oscars

By: Harry Sheff

March 05, 2010

NEW YORK—Actor Danny Glover has sent letters to Oscar nominees asking them not to wear Hugo Boss at the awards ceremony. The move is a show of support for around 300 Cleveland Hugo Boss factory workers who are slated to lose their jobs when the factory closes in April.

The closing of the factory was announced in early January. Talks between the union, Workers United, and Hugo Boss reportedly went on for about a year in attempt to keep the plant open.

Glover is working with the union that represents the Cleveland plant employees, Workers United. He has also circulated a petition and sent pins bearing the slogan “Keep the Hugo Boss Plant Open” to Oscar nominees.

American apparel and tailored clothing manufacturing has been waning over the years. Companies still making suits in the U.S. include JA Apparel, HMX and Individualized Apparel.

When Hugo Boss’s U.S. chairman Mark Brashear spoke to MR’s Karen Alberg Grossman last month, he commented on the closing: “We did much research and learned that the vast majority of American consumers today want the best product at the best price regardless of country of origin, which clearly has less significance today than in years past. While I was saddened to see that facility close, we now need flexible production capacity, the ability to make numerous patterns and models and genders all at competitive prices. And unfortunately, that facility was limited to menswear, and to only two models. It didn’t have the flexibility to accommodate fast-changing customer tastes and unfortunately, there’s not a huge pool of new tailoring talent in America.”

 

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