Interview with Ralph and Ben Zarr
Interview with brothers Ralph and Ben Zarr about their lives and experience working in Kansas City's garment industry. They recount their father's and uncles' backgrounds in the garment business, their father's founding of the Quality Hill Dress Company, which made two-piece dresses for size flexibility, their start in the business as traveling salesmen, and the company's practice of adapting best-selling designs by other companies from previous seasons into two-piece dresses. They also discuss changes in fashion, overseas manufacturing, and labor union demands as factors in the decline of their business and the local industry, and share memories of seeing one of their dresses in a movie, having a racially diverse group of employees, future business dealings, and downtown businesses of the era.
SC229 Garment Industry Oral History Collection
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