In the Fashion District, Time Goes Fast

Interview by Joseph Jae In Kim

Where were you born?
I was born in South Korea in 1968. My whole family immigrated to Miami in 1985 when I was 18 years old. It wasn’t my choice to move to the United States. It was my parents’ choice. I was 18, and when you’re going through puberty, you don’t want to move anywhere. You don’t want to get separated from your friends or your comfortable job, so I was really angry at my parents. 

I was really struggling the first two or three years. I grew up in Miami, got married, and then moved to L.A. in 2002. I later lived in Valencia and Santa Clarita for about eight years, and then I moved down to Koreatown in 2014.

When you first got to California, did you experience any culture shock?
At first, not really. I felt pretty comfortable living in Santa Clarita. The Santa Clarita area is calmer, more spread out, and green like Florida. But after eight or nine years, I had to move back to L.A., and yeah, it’s different. Everything is so narrow with a lot of people and a lot of traffic.

Do you enjoy living in Koreatown?
Not really. I’m planning to move back to Florida at the end of this year. My whole family’s still down there. I’m the only one who’s out on the West Coast. I’m going to reunite with my mom and all my sisters. They’ve been telling me all the time, ‘Come back! Come back!’ But you know, I had my daughter, so I had to wait for her to finish middle school and high school here. Thank God she’s finishing this year, so now I can move wherever I want. I’m thankful that I’m moving away from L.A.

If there were anything you would have wanted to change in Koreatown, what would it be?
There are too many homeless people around. K-Town has a lot of businesses, but there are also a lot of residential areas. I mean, I don’t have anything against homeless people, but when they are around, they bring so much garbage. It’s too much. It wasn’t like this a couple of years ago. Recently, I see every street with a blue tent and a mountain of sseuregi (쓰레기 — trash). Every morning, when I go to Berendo Street between 4th and 6th Streets — oh my goodness, I see it every morning. Why’s the city neglecting them like that? I don’t get it!

Why did you start working in the Garment District?
First of all, I love fashion. My sister and I studied fashion in college. And then you know how the first generation, when they move to the United States, start businesses? My parents had handbag, gold, shoe, and electronic businesses, but because my sister and I were talking about fashion, my dad opened a clothing store in Florida, which they still have. I used to fly from Florida to L.A. every two weeks to purchase the garments and bring them back to Florida. Overall, I have 25 years of experience in the garment district. In Florida, we don’t manufacture. Only L.A. manufactures, and they import from manufacturers in China. So anybody who has business in Florida has to fly out to L.A. to purchase the garment. We have to do it. That’s how we started 25 years ago until now.

How did you get the connections that you needed to get all the merchandise manufactured and sent here to sell?
A long time ago, when we were first opening the shop in Miami, one of our friends recommended us to the L.A. Garment District. So my dad and I flew out here for the first time, and then we looked around, and people were really helpful. Back then, the Internet wasn’t there. But now, you can find all the sources you need by just typing in “Garment District” into a computer.

What do you do in the Garment District now, and how long have you been working in that role?
I’m a clothing store manager. For my current Monday-Friday job, this is my ninth year.

What kinds of skills would I need to have to be a successful clothing store manager?
You need to know about fashion. You have to be really friendly. You have to welcome all the customers, both incoming and online. You need to know how to create an invoice. You need to know how to use computers a little bit. There’s a lot of emailing and data inputting going on, and a bit of Photoshop. If you know a lot about garments, it’s really fun. 

Sometimes, the customers don’t know what they want, so you need to help them create their garment, like what kind of colors are popular this year, what styles are selling, what the hot sellers are, and stuff like that. Especially in the jobber market, it’s more fast-paced, so you need to know a little bit of everything.

How did you learn all of the skills necessary to be a successful clothing store manager?
I think it’s because I’ve been in the Fashion District long enough, and I already have a fashion background. I think that helps a lot because I love what I do, I love fashion, and I love meeting people.

Can you give me a brief description of day-to-day life in the Garment District?
I go to work at 8:30 a.m. I check emails and give instructions to my three co-workers — what styles are coming, what styles have been cut, what’s been selling well lately, and what’s out of stock. We have customers saying that they’re looking for 300 units; sometimes people look for 120 units or 150 units. Within a few days, we will be sold out. We get these orders through emails, web orders, phone orders, and walk-in orders, but almost everything is digital. I have to go pick up clothes of that particular style. Every morning, we go over that, and then after that, I go over with my boss what styles are being cut and find the kinds of styles she’s looking for to bring to the store.

I help customers during the day. I manage [the store] at around 3:00 p.m. and make sure all the shipping goes out properly and that cargo shipments are in place. That’s about it. Every day, I’m so busy! Time goes quickly. It’s Monday, and then in the blink of an eye, it’s Friday. That’s how fast time goes for me. Every time, I say, “Today’s Wednesday already? Today’s Friday already?” A couple of weeks later, it’ll be Christmas again! In the Fashion District, time goes fast.

Do you get calls from customers or clothing manufacturers?
I only deal with the customers. My boss deals with the manufacturers. That’s another part — the crazy part — and an even harder responsibility than mine. It’s a whole different story. The manufacturing side of business is crazy. Also, production management in China is a very stressful job. You miss one communication with [Chinese manufacturers] and the whole garment comes out wrong. That means money loss. That’s why it’s a really, really stressful job. There’s a lot of risk. For that role, you must be professional.

Who determines who gets what role in the company where you work?
I think it’s always been like that in this company in particular. My boss is a Chinese person from China. She knows what’s going on over there, but she didn’t have experience in the downtown Fashion District. This is only her third or fourth year, so she doesn’t know much about customers, and she doesn’t know much about fashion in the U.S.A. I think that’s how my part, her part, and my co-worker’s parts are divided.

What do you think is the most difficult part about working in the Garment District?
I’d say that the most difficult part for me is taking care of hard customers. Most of the customers are nice, polite, and reasonable. But sometimes, there are customers who are really demanding and rude. So we’re dealing with those kinds of customers who are the most headache-giving, the most unpleasant, and the hardest to deal with. And the second most difficult part is when the products come out wrong. That is very upsetting.

Can you tell me about one of those upsetting moments that you remember?
One item was selling really well. We had 300 units, but we oversold them. We got over 500 orders. Only 300 people got it. The rest of them had to wait for one more month. Some customers understand. Some people say, ‘Okay, I ordered a little later than the people in front of me, so I got cut out.’ So they’re saying that there’s no choice; they have to wait. And that’s good. But some customers are preachy. They are like, ‘You know, I’m a loyal customer. I always go before anybody.’ It’s an interesting dilemma, you know? I have to explain to them, “We’re really sorry. We oversold a product, and unfortunately, I had to cut you off. I have to make you wait until [the next shipment] comes in.” Some customers don’t like to wait. They throw everything at you, saying, ‘I’ll never buy from you.’ ‘Bad customer service.’ That kind of stuff drives me crazy.

What else do you enjoy about the Garment District?
I get to see new fashion every single day, and I get to meet new faces every single day. And because I am getting older, I just like the fact that I have to get up every morning, I have a place to go, I have work to do, and I have something to do. It just makes me feel alive. I mean, I don’t want to get up in the morning sometimes. But I think that my routine is important to me. Last year, when the pandemic had [two months of lockdown] and we couldn’t get out of the house, I was really happy during the first two weeks getting up in the morning. But then after that, I was like, “There’s nothing to do, nowhere to go.” It was miserable for me.

These days, the COVID-19 rate is decreasing but still present, so a lot of people are afraid of going outside. How did the pandemic affect your work in the Garment District?
I would say the pandemic didn’t affect my work much. When COVID happened in March 2020, we had to close for two months but reopened in early June. From June until September 2020, people didn’t visit but continued to purchase [clothes] online, so the Garment District still had [online] business going on even if we didn’t have any face-to-face interaction last year. All the regular customers’ orders were online. So business-wise, we were thinking ahead. But since November this year, people started coming out with the masks on to shop. It’s pretty busy.

I visited the Garment District with the Koreatown Storytelling Program, and we took pictures and talked to some of the business owners. Apparently, many people at the beginning of the pandemic were relying on the Garment District to make masks. Can you confirm if that’s true in your case as well?
I don’t understand what you mean by depending on the Garment District [for masks]. We never made masks. In the Garment District, some areas do sell fabrics. But where I am, I don’t know anything about fabrics since
I only work with apparel.

There seems to be a lot of racial diversity within the Garment District. Have you had trouble adapting to it? How did you react to it?
Well, in the L.A. Garment District, people used to come in from all over the country. Right now, I don’t see any Europeans, but I still see a lot of South Americans, people from Mexico, people from Colombia, and even people from Israel. Before the pandemic, people were coming from everywhere: England, France, and even South Africa.

I guess they don’t fly anymore. These days, there are a lot of locals and a lot of people from different states. Some people are difficult; some people are nice. I get these kinds of attitudes from people every day, but what can I say?

Have you ever been racially discriminated against in your experience of working in the Garment District?
Not in the Garment District. I had that experience once when I was 20 years old, because back then, I couldn’t speak English. Maybe I misunderstood that person; I don’t know. But I haven’t experienced discrimination in the Garment District.

Do you know about the AAPI hate crimes, particularly targeting the elderly?
Oh yeah, I heard about it. I saw clips. In New York, somebody hit an old Asian woman, but nobody helped. Even in downtown L.A., a couple of guys were trying to do something to an Asian boy.

How do the recent AAPI hate crimes make you feel?
It is really upsetting and scary. One thing I don’t understand is that it’s not only Asian people who get attacked. Black people get attacked, Mexicans are getting attacked, and white folks are getting attacked. But these days, why are they only talking about Asian people? Is it because of COVID? I don’t understand that part. When I see the news and when I talk to people around, I see that not only Asian Americans get this kind of thing. A lot of Black people hate Black people, and white people hate white people. Lots of Korean gangs are also doing bad stuff to Koreans.

This thing is happening every single day of our lives and in our society. Why is the media making it such a big deal? That’s the part I don’t understand these days. People get killed every day. Bad things are happening every day to every kind of person. It is actually nothing new. It’s been happening as long as I can remember, every single day. People get killed. People get raped.

Would you consider the community tight-knit, supportive, or something else?
It’s something else. These are all individual companies, and we don’t interact. We only interact with our company, co-workers, and customers. We don’t even know what’s going on outside of the store.

That’s interesting. I thought that as neighbors, you would all know each other.
We only say hi, and that’s it. We don’t even know each other’s names. Yeah, it’s crazy. Every morning, we say hi, and that’s about it. It’s because there are so many things going on in each store. We don’t have time to find out what’s happening in [other stores]. You know what I mean? We don’t have time for that.

Have you learned any life lessons from working in the garment industry and living in Koreatown that you would like to share?
I would say I was a pretty lazy person until I started working under people. I was initially a boss back then. I pretty much failed, so I had to work for the boss, and it was a different experience. After some time working for someone, I had to be on time and professional. I couldn’t be lazy. I had to work as my boss expected. So that was a big lesson. I can’t be lazy while working. I shouldn’t be lazy when I am by myself, but I was. There are so many different kinds of people. It doesn’t matter what color you are. There are good people and bad people of every color in every nation. Especially in the Fashion District, since you meet people from everywhere.