A riveting history of how organized crime infiltrated and influenced America's garment industry.

The Mafia has been controlling and manipulating the garment industry in New York City since the 1910s, beating up striking employees, extorting managers for protection money, and demanding ownership stakes in companies. That control resulted in economic and cultural consequences felt throughout the United States.

In Gangsters and Fashionistas: The Rise and Decline of the Mob in the Garment Industry, Jeffrey Sussman, one of America's foremost authorities on organized crime, provides fascinating profiles of some of the most powerful and ruthless gangsters who controlled America's fashion industry from Monk Eastman and Big Jack Zelig to Jacob “Little Augie” Orgen, Kid Dropper, and the Gorilla Boys. Designers and manufacturers created and produced every style and type of apparel worn by Americans, and because organized crime extorted manufacturers, designers, contractors, truckers, and unions, every American wound up paying a mob tax on their clothing. These endeavors completely changed labor racketeering and provided organized crime a permanent foothold, not only in the needle-trade unions but in the entire New York garment industry that lasted for decades.

From its first page to its last, Gangsters and Fashionistas is a fascinating chronicle of the mobsters who used ingenuity and violence to generate billions of dollars by creating the trends and styles that have defined American fashion for more than a century. This is an essential addition to any history buff or true crime reader's bookshelf.