Ann Federman was the next-to-youngest of nine children born to Miriam and Abraham Warszawski in Będzin, Poland. Only fourteen when the Germans invaded Poland, Ann spent the war in Parschnitz, a slave labor in camp in Czechoslovakia. After liberation, Ann was eventually reunited with her sister and two brothers. The family lived in the Bergen Belsen Displaced Persons Camps where she met her husband, Isak Federman. They came to the United States in 1946, settling in Kansas City, where they were the first Holocaust survivors to marry.

Iser Cukier (born Iser Cukrowski) the youngest of seven children, was born in Częstochowa, Poland, where his family owned a large bakery that was located in the same building as their apartment. An older brother advised him to learn a trade rather than attend high school. He became a men’s tailor and, when that proved insufficiently challenging, he moved to Lodz to learn women’s tailoring and then to Warsaw and Katowice to attend design school. Eventually he had his own shop in Zawiercie, employing ten people and supporting his mother. He also married and had a child. His wife and son and the rest of his family were murdered during the Holocaust, but Iser was kept alive as a slave laborer making German uniforms in a factory in Zawiercie.For a time, after the slave labor workshop was disbanded and most of the workers deported, a sympathetic officer hid him on a Luftwaffe base. In May 1945, after liberation, he made his way to Paris, where he worked as a designer and met and married Tola Gottlieb. They immigrated to the United States in 1952, settling in Kansas City where his wife had family.

Ilsa Dahl grew up in Geilenkirchen, Germany where her family had lived for generations. They were observant Jews and patriotic Germans, and Ilsa’s father had served in the German army during World War I. Of the town’s 4000 inhabitants, most were Roman Catholics, with whom the family enjoyed friendly relations. Ilsa had hoped to be an archeologist, but the Nazis thwarted her hopes for higher education, so she studied dressmaking, first in Aachen and then in Berlin, where she met her future husband. Ilsa, who already had an American visa, left Germany days after Kristallnacht, but her parents and most of her extended family were killed in camps. 

She discusses joining family in Kansas City, working in the garment industry, her family and social life, and other topics.

Interview with Steve Dvorak about his experience working in the Kansas City garment industry and about his career with Youthcraft. He discusses the history of the company from its founding by Leon Karosen, and its merger with Stern-Slegman-Prins, a company which Chick's father Robert worked for; the manufacturing and sales processes, including traveling with racks of coats to visit stores throughout the country. He recalls the different facilities from which the company operated, including buildings in North Kansas City, the downtown Garment District, and near 31st and Gillham, and discusses the company's national profile and mergers, as well as changes in the garment industry over the ensuing decades, including the shift to department stores and other large chains.

Interview with Martin Unger about his life and experience in the Kansas City garment industry. He discusses his family, his immigration to the United States from Germany in 1939, his experience in tailoring, and his interest in designing women's clothes. He recalls working as a designer in New York for 41 years until coming to Kansas City to work for ladies' coat and suit manufacturer Youthcraft, and discusses the decline of the local and domestic clothing industry, attributing the change to overseas manufacturing and the rise in big box chain retail. His wife, Ann Unger, also shares memories, and the couple shares photographs of their family and examples of Martin's designs.

Interview with Eugene Salvay about his life and his family's experience with the Kansas City garment industry, with additional information provided by his nephew, Craig Solvay. He discusses his childhood in the 1920s, and his education in aircraft engineering which lead to job in World War II working on B-25s at the assembly plant in the Fairfax District in spite of antisemitism in the hiring process. He recalls his father's work as designer at Fashionbilt before moving on to mail-order company National Bellas Hess, and operating his own business designing custom coats. He also shares stories about his family roots in Lithuania, his Jewish identity and ancestry, and meeting Harry Truman in the 1930s. Solvay also mentions his participation in developing Israeli aviation and his relationship with Moshe Arens.

Interview with Davida Singer Pessen about her life and experience working at Kansas City department stores and other clothing retailers. She discusses her start circa 1960 at Klein's and Rothschild's, continuing in retail through moves to Omaha and St. Louis, and returning to the work in Kansas City as a single mother. She recalls working in a various of department stores and boutiques at Metcalf South and The Landing, and moving in to work at multiple locations of the fine clothing store Woolf Brothers. She also discusses issues including price markup, demand differences from one outlet of a store to another, the decline and ultimate closure of the Woolf Brothers company, and her retirement in 2010.

Interview with Mary Lou Chalmers about her experience working in Kansas City's garment industry from the late 1950s through late 1970s.. She discusses enrolling in the fashion design program at Kansas City Art Institute, as well as taking courses at Fanny Fern Fitzwater School of Fashion Illustration and the Isabelle Boldin School of Fashion, and then working in design and pattern-making at area garment companies such as Nelly Don and Gay Gibson. She describes the process of designing and making clothing, her experiences at numerous companies, the perks of working at Nelly Don, and times that her designs were featured in national magazines. She also discusses the decline of the garment fashion industry in the 1970s, the homogenization of shopping, and the shift to manufacturing in Asia.

Interview with Margie Bercu and her daughter Barbara Bloch about their family's history with Kansas City's garment district, and discuss what garment design and manufacturing still exist in Kansas City at the time of the interview. Barbara discusses her father Archie's start at Maurice Coat & Suit Company and later transition to Lan-Mar Sporting Goods, which manufactured little league baseball uniforms, basketball uniforms and other athletic apparel. Lan-Mar later spun off a company called Cotton Duck which manufactured restaurant uniforms and related apparel. The women also discuss Archie's education and military service, Barbara's continuing work with retail and restaurant uniforms through the 1980s, oursourcing of manufacturing, and remaining American textile manufacturing. The women also note several local companies continuing to work in garment production into the 2000s.

Interview with Suzie Aron about her family history in Kansas City's garment industry, beginning with her grandfather Hyman Gordon's immigration to Topeka, Kansas, and later to Kansas City. She discusses Jewish prevalence in the industry, and her family's Frances Gee Garment Company which focused primarily on uniforms for nurses and other woman-dominated professions - a direction taken because it was easier to work with all white fabric. She discusses the company being one of the first with overseas production facilities, having opened factories in Puerto Rico and Japan, as well as other aspects of the company's operations and union relationships, including her experience working on designing and branding uniforms for the fast food industry, work which eventually became the focus of the company.