We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful George Kalajian. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with George below.

Alright, George thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Everything I have ever learned in my life has been either from my dad, or while I was standing next to him. I consider myself eternally lucky, that I was i the unique position to receive data passed down through 5 generations of my family. This is all thanks to my dad and his true love of the art of pleating.

From a very young age, going to work and pleating were both always part of my life. I was born in Lebanon, and lived there until I was five years old. At the age of five, my family moved to NYC. From then on, I spent most of my time in my fathers factories where he was manufacturing clothing.

My parents and I would walk through department stores and my father would look through the windows. He would look at all of the pleated garments and point out all the imperfections. He’d critique the garments to no end. I was learning all the way.
So, naturally once I became a teenager, I started working for my father.

After a few years, I got to the coming-of-age point. My father and I weren’t clicking as much anymore at this point. So, I ventured off to a totally separate location to work. I explored many different industries. From tech, to teaching, to owning a bar.

I was lost, bored… I had no true fire or passion.

One day, my mother called me up and asked for my help in making some samples. I really didn’t want to go, but I did out of loyalty. Upon going, I noticed things weren’t going so great at the factory. This was during a time where big box fashion was beginning to take over, and most of our garments started outsourcing from China.

This single event is what gave me an increased sense of responsibility to help my mother and father. So, I stepped in and then I figured out how I would make our family business stand out. Being the fifth generation of the business, it was at this time I decided this was my future, I was all-in on this, and nothing in the world would stop me.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Everything that I learned about fashion and the industry as a whole, I learned from my family. I learned all of the technical data and methods from my father, and I learned about all things in relation to aesthetics from my mother.

With the knowledge I have now, I realize that the first thing I had to do was make the decision to learn. Once I made this decision, to fast track my knowledge, I had to jump ahead with putting pressure on needing the information in a more immediate way. So I signed a book deal on pleating fundamentals, without having the book or information ready. This essentially forced me to confront the subject and organize the information in a codified way. What could have sped this process up would be starting sooner, rather than being intimidated by the task of gathering the knowledge. I think that another great way to learn something in a more efficient way, is to think of how you could take the data you are learning, and teach it to someone else. Looking at learning in this way, helps to filter out excess information, and organize the imperative information needed to execute the task being taught.

The skills that were most essential to my learning of the craft, would be having the ability to take a massive amount of data and simplify it as much as possible. This gives you the ability to objectively look at the most important pieces of data and build a structure for which you can replicate it and add elements, to then teach to others. The obstacles in my way of learning the information in a faster way, were time and lack of assistance with condensing the knowledge being taught to me. My father was aging, so I was running out of time to extract the vast knowledge he contained. Alternatively, there were only so many hours in a day to spend on this task.

I often thought of my fathers knowledge as a ”gold mine”. To get to the gold, the knowledge had to be ‘mined’, and then extracted carefully, then of course sold, or given to the appropriate places.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

The evidence is clear when it comes to fast fashion. The phenomenon of big box fashion has done devastating damage to the American Fashion Industry. The massive growth in fast fashions popularity, has created economic issues, loss of craftsmanship, and artistry. Society as a whole can help best support fashion designers to create a thriving ecosystem by encouraging people to spend their money supporting local artisans on a global scale. The benefits of spending your money on locally made goods, is that it contributes a tremendous amount to the economy within our country, states, cities, and small communities.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist for me has always been in teaching the traditional skills needed for the next generation to save the art of high end fashion, in the most environmentally responsible way possible. We are actively doing this through our not for profit, Project Golden Bear. This project gives the next generation of designers the ability to learn and perfect their craft, under the guidance of master craftsman. This is accomplished through using 100% upcycled fabrics of the finest quality. Each bear made by our apprentices will go to a child suffering from terminal illness.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://internationalpleating.com
• Instagram: @internationalpleating
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InternationalPleating
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tom-s-sons-international-pleating/posts/?feedView=all
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Internationalpleating/videos

Image Credits

Barbra Nitke photo- Gilded Age Photo