Gerri Napolitano and Kristin McGuinness

This week’s episode features stories about Italian-Americans in the garment factories of Westchester. Gerri Napolitano discusses her family’s connection to two sweatshops in White Plains, while Kristin McGuinness shares memories and stories of her grandparents’ factory in Mt. Vernon. Both interviews were recorded at the City Center in White Plains on February 12, 2020.
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Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

 Sewing Community is part of ArtsWestchester's Folk Arts Program, made possible in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.   

Transcript

1:30 My name is Gerri Napolitano. I was born in White Plains, grew up in Silver Lake, and came back to live in White Plains now. My mother’s family has been in White Plains since the late 1800s. Along with a number of other Italian families in the area, most of them came from the same village in Italy, called Serracapriola. My great-grandmother came here as a widow with three little girls. My grandmother grew up…my grandmother and her sisters went to school at Good Council, which was not actually a school then. It was a home for girls. I only found this out when I looked into Ancestry and found out my grandmother boarded in this school and then years later, I went to school there. And actually, the original name of Good Council was St. Mary’s in the Field. It was a home for Italian and Irish girls.

My grandmother, when she got married, had 12 living children. Several of her children worked in the sweatshops in White Plains…as seamstresses, pressers. Eventually, they owned a sweatshop. Their very own shop. One was on Williams Avenue, which isn’t there anymore. The other was down on Martine Avenue. That was a really big one. That is the one my aunt and uncle owned for many years. That is how my family was in fabrics, always. They all grew up right here in White Plains. My grandfather used to race horses down Main Street.  The ones with the little carriage. We had pictures of that but I don’t know what happened to them now. 

I remember going to the sweatshops. My aunts and my cousins would work there and they would bring the children. It wasn’t like you had babysitters. They were poor, and I would go. In the picture I showed you, it was me being there. And another child in the picture being there. I grew up there. To this day, I remember the sounds of the sewing machines all going at one time…and the steam irons. I just loved it. I didn’t complain one bit. I thought it was terrific. When they opened up the window in the sweatshop to the roof, I used to go play on the roof. Isn’t that a great place for your kid to play?! 

My aunt Winnie, she was a presser. I remember that. This is my cousin Carrie. She was on the machines. This is my aunt Jean. She was also on the sewing machines. This is my aunt Francis, who we all called Waddy, and she was a presser. Now the pressers…oh my god if you saw the machines…the irons were attached almost to the ceiling. They were on a coil of some sort. And the steam would be coming out of them in the summer. It was unreal. This is the guy who was in charge. I don’t know if he owned the shop or not And one of these people is Mary the Floor Lady. I just love that name. She would be in charge of the machines. 

I remember as a kid, as I got a little older, one of my aunts bought a shop in Mt. Vernon and I would go with her. And I would have to put…say there was a belt for a dress…My job was to…there would be a piece of wood and you would turn the belt inside out on the piece of wood. I would sit there and do that. At that time the women had a lot of belts. The dresses would come with cloth belts and we would have to work on them. 

My mother and my great aunt were very talented seamstresses. It just seemed to be something the family could do. My great aunt looked at a wedding gown on one of the main streets in White Plains, copied it, and went home and made it for my mother as her wedding gown. They could make drapes. They could make curtains, make slip covers…whatever. It was what they could do. And they learned it in the shops. 

5:40 My name is Kristen McGuinness. I grew up in Westchester County. My husband and I both work in Westchester now, but we live in Connecticut. We heard about the event and were so excited to learn more and bring our children. So we came today to have our three young girls try sewing out, because that was really important to us growing up. My grandmother was a seamstress. And my grandfather owned a factory in Mt. Vernon, New York called Lufay Fashions, where they designed and made dresses. Being able to share that piece of history with my children today, and also learn from Amanda who is very talented, has been a really great experience for us. 

It was in the 80s and I was young, but from what I remember of it, there was a bunch of Italian women who worked within the factory. There were lines of sewing machines, and fabric cutting in the back. Everything would come together in a matter of minutes. Different designers would come to them. Donna Karan was one of them, who came to them with dresses all the time. And by the end of the day a whole rack of dresses would be ready to go to be shipped to the City. I remember how everyone worked as a team. I remember my grandfather, who owned the shop, putting whatever the sample dress was, up at the front and talking about it with everybody. “This is what we are going to do. This is how this is going to go. This is our deadline.” My grandfather had previously worked in the shop as a presser from when he was a kid until he was an older man. My grandmother was a seamstress there. And the opportunity came up from the boss that he worked for, to buy the shop. And they didn’t have much money, but they took everything that they had and they bought it and really turned it around to be something very special where they were sought out by big designers. My grandfather always told me, you can’t do anything without your team. We loved these women who were a part of our family.  No matter what we did, and whatever my grandfather did, he’d say “If I do well, they do well. And we all work hard.” Even though he owned the shop and might have been the boss, he would be there pressing, steaming and sweating. I could remember coming in after school and seeing him drenched. The shop had no real air conditioning. It was really hot up there, I remember that. He would be drenched and getting the job done. And they all worked together. He used to say “if you are going to do it, you are going to do it right, and you are going to deliver 5 stars.”

My mother used to go with him when she was a teenager, because he was paid for how many shirts he would press. She would go with him. He would press it. She would wrap it…so that they could get done quicker. So that they could make more money for the family. That work ethic was really instilled in my upbringing and that was from the shop. He started his own clothing line. And he named it after me, Kristen. It didn’t fully take off, but he tried to make that something, where he would sketch out his own ideas with all of the women, with the team.  It was a very big part of our lives and we all talk about it often. I can’t believe how long ago it was now.