Midtown West is a region representative of New York’s Fashion Capital, and is referred to by many by its sobriquet, the “Garment District”. With world-class fashion schools like Parsons School of Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology just a 15 minutes subway ride away, the ubiquity of buttons, ribbons, and fashion stores come as no surprise. As a district that houses such artistic potential, Midtown West is a virtual battleground of fabric stores. A quick Yelp search reveals over 1600 stores in the area. Amongst them, the second Yelp hit, Paron Fabric, is open seven days a week despite what seems to be a wide-spread practice to close on the weekends. The ratings reveal popular support for this store with four and a half stars out of a possible five.

Upon reading the Yelp reviews, the name of a single individual who diligently works at this fabric store popped up; Lucy Dawind. An enthusiastic yelp reviewer discribes her uncanny ability to reply comprehensively to all 100 of their questions pertaining to silk. Harboring mixed feelings between the desire to meet this knowledgeable, presumably amiable individual, and doubts about such an inordinately positive Yelp review, I headed to Paron Fabric. There, I found Dawind sitting in a cozy box on the right-hand side of the entrance door.

Dawind is a sweet 65 year-old woman from Poland, who immigrated to the United States when she was 20. Dawind claims that, while she did not have a say in the matter of her immigration, she had always aspired to move to the states. Perhaps the vision of pursuing the American Dream then and now remains unchanged. Dawind emphasizes her family’s immigration through a permanent visa with a flicker of pride. She adds that everything was better back then; there was less crime, and finding employment was not at all arduous, and purchasing items of value was not as difficult as it is today.

According to Dawind, her career in a fabric store was only an accident; she had neither been studying fashion, nor did she particularly have a strong interest in it. Dawind’s original Fabric store, one that she had devoted 20 years to since 1971, had closed as a result of massive urban development. ”They used to be 40 streets full of fabric, but now it’s only restaurants and hotels. NYC is catering to tours not to fabric”, she says. At the first fabric store, she studied the intricacies of the various fabrics. This required mind-numbing amounts of time devoted to memorizing fabric types, but her persistence paid off. She started working at Paron Fabric, where she has now spent 25 years; “I like working in the Fashion Capital of New York, that’s why I’m here so many years. But I don’t know if it still is.”

Dawind claims that her “Fashion Capital New York” is gradually disappearing. Numerous factories and fabric stores have been decimated, and many have been forced to shut down. “Made in the USA” has become a rarified, expensive logo, and the cloth manufacturing industry has shifted to China and its South East Asian neighbors. Designers began preferring cheaper fabric, and mass manufacturing of fabrics became a cultural norm; something Dawind cannot agree with. “I wish things are what they used to be, but I think that’s impossible.”

With rents rising exponentially, the survival of small stores such as these may be difficult. Even a veteran of the city such as Dawind is forced to face the harsh realities that accompany living in New York; every day, she must rely on public transport to commute from New Jersey.

Dawind says the city of New York is rife with change, and living here is like living in the world of a television drama. She was attracted to surprise, happiness as well as fear and disappointment in this city. Dawind’ favorite fabric is a natural, cool, yet diaphanous cotton, which resembles her very own personality: with its softness. This softness seems to be missing from the city that currently reaps satisfaction from its immersion in business.