American Trench

American Trench manufactures in the United States and is unusually specific about where: wool knit in Pennsylvania, combed cotton knit in North Carolina, cashmere knit in the South, merino knit in New York, domestic wool hopsack woven in Connecticut and tailored in New York.

It is equally specific that some of those fibres are imported — Scottish cashmere, Italian merino, Swiss Ventile, Japanese oxford cloth — and that the domestic guarantee applies “unless otherwise noted.” That candour is worth more than a blanket claim, and the notes are really there: every product page carries its own origin line, and reading a dozen of them turns up the same sentence over and over, “made in the USA of imported materials.” The yarn crosses an ocean; the knitting does not.

Two exceptions cut in opposite directions, and both are on the shelf together. The Keystone jersey tees are made in the USA of domestic materials — American cotton, knit and sewn here, the top mark — and have their own records. At the other end, the shop stocks goods from other makers under Partners in Craft, including shoes made in Japan and England. Those are somebody else’s, and the mark on this page does not reach them.