Sweatshop Exhibit Rends Garment Industry

Breaking with the apparel industry, Levi Strauss & Co., Kmart Corp. and television personality Kathie Lee Gifford have decided to support a controversial exhibit on sweatshops being planned by the Smithsonian Institution.

Gifford, caught up in controversy when it was revealed that some of her clothing line was produced in sweatshops, will provide an essay that will be posted in the exhibit. Levi Strauss and Kmart have agreed to provide funds or other support for the project, which will include a re-creation of the slave-like conditions at the notorious El Monte sweatshop.

The planned exhibit has been denounced by the National Retail Federation, the American Apparel Manufacturers Assn. and the California Fashion Assn., who call it biased and negative. Nevertheless, one group said Wednesday that the participation of Levi and Kmart should help bring balance to the project.

Curators of the project--Peter Liebhold and Harry Rubenstein--have said that the exhibit will be fair and have been seeking support from individual apparel companies since the various groups announced their opposition in September.

“We want to move away from the simplified ‘good guy-bad guy’ concept by creating an exhibit that looks at the socioeconomic forces that create sweatshops,” Rubenstein said in an interview Wednesday.

The exhibit, titled “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A Dialogue on American Sweatshops, 1820-Present,” will open in Washington on April 21. A traveling exhibit is also planned for New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Rubenstein and Liebhold are in Los Angeles to videotape interviews with some of the Thai immigrants who were discovered in 1995 working in peonage to sew garments for brand-name apparel makers and retailers. They will also videotape California Labor Commissioner Jose Millan and others who took part in the raid that liberated about 70 workers.

The El Monte episode and the 1996 discovery of sweatshop conditions at the facilities of some contractors who produced clothing for Wal-Mart’s Kathie Lee Gifford clothing line generated outrage and industry reform efforts, Liebhold said.

Gifford’s essay will include her reaction to her own sweatshop scandal, said Gary Lewi, a New York-based spokesman. “She was shocked and very hurt when it was suggested she would seek to profit from those employed in sweatshops,” Lewi said. “She has put her resources into a [contractor] monitoring program designed to spot these problems and eliminate them. She’s participating in the exhibit because education is as critical as implementing a monitoring program.”

San Francisco-based Levi Strauss will provide $10,000 and materials on industry efforts to prevent sweatshop abuse.

“The exhibit provides an opportunity for people to learn where progress needs to be made and where progress has been made,” Levi spokesman David Samson said.

Kmart, based in suburban Detroit, has not decided on the extent of its support but will provide exhibit materials or money or both. “We have to educate everyone because it’s an issue that can’t be ignored,” company spokeswoman Michele Jasukaitis said.

The Smithsonian has already raised $150,000--enough to mount the exhibit in Washington--and is now trying to raise another $135,000 for expenses such as the traveling exhibit.

The industry critics of the project are still opposed.

“The exhibit they are planning would tar law-abiding companies with same brush as El Monte and other illegal operations in the United States and abroad,” said Jack Morgan, a spokesman for the Washington-based American Apparel Manufacturers Assn. “Levi is a member of our association and they have a right to take part, but we respectfully disagree.”

Tracy Mullin, president of the Washington-based National Retail Federation, said sweatshops are not a suitable topic for the Smithsonian, but said Levi and Kmart will bring more balance to the project.

Ilse Metchek, executive director of the California Fashion Assn., a Los Angeles-based trade group that includes Southland apparel manufacturers, said her group would review any changes in the project format before deciding whether to withdraw its opposition.