{"id":1405,"date":"2025-12-08T10:06:51","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T10:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tomfit247.com\/?p=1405"},"modified":"2025-12-08T10:06:51","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T10:06:51","slug":"can-this-180-year-old-factory-save-american-selvedge-denim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tomfit247.com\/?p=1405","title":{"rendered":"Can This 180-Year-Old Factory Save American Selvedge Denim?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometime in the coming weeks, a convoy of trucks will depart Vidalia, Louisiana, for Trion, Georgia, carrying 45 antique Draper X3 shuttle looms, 45 Picanol President shuttle looms, and the fate of American-made selvedge denim. The story of how those looms got to Vidalia, why they\u2019re headed to Georgia, and how they became a stand-in for all that was great about the bygone days of American-made clothing begins in 2017. That\u2019s when the fabled Cone Mills White Oak denim plant in Greensboro, North Carolina, announced it was shutting its doors after 112 years in business. As the main supplier of denim to Levi\u2019s and many other famed brands for much of the 20th century, it\u2019s hard to overstate how important White Oak was to the history of blue jeans. As the country's last industrial-scale producer of selvedge denim\u2014the old-school fabric prized for its authenticity and the unique patina it develops over time\u2014the closure of White Oak wasn\u2019t just the end of a company; it was the end of an era.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt closed a chapter on American denim that we're never going to have again,\u201d says Roy Slaper, the founder of Roy Denim and a longtime White Oak devotee. What made White Oak\u2019s denim so special wasn\u2019t just the building or the generations of skilled workers who spent their careers there, Slaper explains; it was the looms themselves. \u201cThe Draper X3, that\u2019s the<\/em> loom,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Narrower and slower than their modern counterparts, White Oak\u2019s Draper X3s date back as far as the 1940s, and the fabric they produced had an unmistakable look and feel. \u201cThe looms were in a building that was very old, and the wooden floor would bounce up and down as they worked,\u201d Slaper says. \u201cThis introduced inconsistencies in the weaves that would not have been there otherwise.\u201d Slaper\u2019s stockpile of White Oak denim allowed him to continue making his namesake jeans until 2021. After that, he says, \u201cI was done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the denim world didn\u2019t have to wait long for a savior. In 2018, an ambitious startup called Vidalia Mills acquired White Oak\u2019s shuttle looms and relocated them to its newly inaugurated plant in Vidalia, Louisiana. Vidalia Mills promised to continue White Oak\u2019s legacy and bring large-scale denim production back to the United States, but the company ultimately fell far short of its ambitions and collapsed under more than $30 million in debt in late 2024. Once again, the fate of American selvedge hung in the balance while rumors swirled about who might pick up where Vidalia left off.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Cone Mills\u2019s Draper X3 looms, seen here at the iconic White Oak plant in 2012, will soon be delivered to Mount Vernon Mills in Trion, Georgia.<\/p>\n

Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/figure>\n

Some insiders speculated that a Japanese company would buy the looms. Others believed that a coalition of American denim brands should step up. Some, like Evan Morrison, a selvedge denim specialist at the White Oak Legacy Foundation (W.O.L.F.), saw Mount Vernon Mills, an 180-year-old denim manufacturer based in South Carolina, as the looms\u2019 best hope. \u201cWhat would really be great to see is if Mount Vernon Mills could acquire those shuttle looms, and we could help to keep them running,\u201d he told GQ<\/em> in March.<\/p>\n

Established in 1845, Mount Vernon Mills is a rare example of an American textile manufacturer that\u2019s managed to not only survive the ravages of globalization and venture capital, but thrive. With six textile manufacturing plants across the Southern United States and 750 employees, Mount Vernon Mills produces more than a million yards of fabric each week. It\u2019s also the country\u2019s leading denim producer, supplying the likes of Wrangler, Levi\u2019s, and Carhartt.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually told a couple of folks to stop talking about [it],\u201d says Bill Rogers, president of Mount Vernon Mills. \u201cBecause somebody from Japan, or somebody like that, was going to swoop in and try to grab the looms. So I said, \u2018We\u2019re gonna have to lie low and let the legal process play out, but I think I can get them.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

When Vidalia\u2019s assets were auctioned off in August\u2014much to the surprise of those watching from the sidelines\u2014the looms were not included in the sale. It turned out that the shuttle looms from White Oak weren\u2019t actually owned by Vidalia Mills at all, but by an NYC-based company called KaKa Cotton. Their fate remained a mystery until last week, when Mount Vernon Mills announced that it had reached an agreement with KaKa to move the looms to its flagship plant in Trion and establish the first industrial-scale selvedge production line since White Oak.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese looms are a national treasure,\u201d says Victor Lytvinenko, the co-founder of Raleigh Denim. \u201cOnce White Oak closed, Vidalia gave it a shot, and it didn\u2019t really work, but Mount Vernon has everything that\u2019s needed to do it the right way. It's the only place in America that really could do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given the recent history of the looms that will soon arrive at the Mount Vernon plant in Trion, not to mention the ongoing challenges facing the American textile industry, anyone might be skeptical about the financial sense of weaving denim on antique machines in 2025. Despite this, Rogers is bullish that he can succeed where others have not. \u201cMount Vernon\u2019s been in business 180 years and still going strong,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019ve [also] got a viable denim business in other markets, so we\u2019re not going to live and die by selvedge.\u201d<\/p>\n

To keep the machines running smoothly, Rogers\u2019 team has begun combing old mills, factories, barns, and warehouses to source derelict machines and spare parts. He\u2019s also hoping to partner with heritage groups like the Draper Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts, and the White Oak Legacy Foundation (W.O.L.F.) for training and expertise. If all goes to plan, he hopes to have a single-shift production line running by the spring.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t wait to see it,\u201d says Lytvinenko, who is working through the final yards of his White Oak stash. As excited as he is to turn the Mount Vernon Mills-made selvedge into jeans, he doesn\u2019t expect it to replicate the unique look of the stuff woven at Cone White Oak. \u201cAt Vidalia, the looms were on concrete floors, and they didn\u2019t shake in the same way. It\u2019s a really beautiful thing that can't be reproduced.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometime in the coming weeks, a convoy of trucks will depart Vidalia, Louisiana, for Trion, Georgia, carrying 45 antique Draper X3 shuttle looms, 45 Picanol President shuttle looms, and the fate of American-made selvedge denim. The story of how those looms got to Vidalia, why they\u2019re headed to Georgia, and how they became a stand-in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.tomfit247.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Denim-News-flxjtjkp5le.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[27,30,28,29],"class_list":["post-1405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-denim-news","tag-denim","tag-denim-news","tag-jeans","tag-style"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfit247.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfit247.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfit247.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfit247.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfit247.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfit247.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfit247.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfit247.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfit247.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfit247.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}