Maurice Malone: The Experience Behind Denim Talk and the Denim Workshop

For those just discovering Denim Talk or the Denim Workshop, especially younger designers or people newer to denim, it’s important to understand where I’m coming from.

I didn’t learn this business from school first. I learned by doing—by asking questions, experimenting, making mistakes, and figuring things out in real time. Everything I teach now comes from that experience.

Hardwear by Maurice Malone (1984)

I started my first brand at 19 years old: Hardwear by Maurice Malone, established February 15, 1984. I was self-taught and combined denim, leather, and metal, along with knitwear tops and bottoms. Within a few years, the line was selling in Dayton-Hudson department stores alongside brands like Polo by Ralph Lauren and WilliWear.

At the time, my company was supported by a small group of early investors—friends from high school, my father, and a friend of his from work. A few years after I showed serious commitment, my father’s friend provided us with a building in Highland Park, Michigan to work out of, my father helped purchase more sewing machines, and my high school friends put up most of the money for materials, marketing, and staff.

Along with friends, we were producing everything ourselves in that small factory. The problem was, as orders increased, we couldn’t keep up. There weren’t many people in Detroit at the time who knew how to sew at a production level, and I was learning on the spot how to run a factory while trying to scale it at the same time.

Eventually, my partners asked me to go to New York to find production support. Over phone calls, they didn’t trust the factories tI found, simply based on how fast factory owners talked, so the plan shifted to sending me to Asia to find manufacturers. By the time we reached that point, we had already run out of time to produce the orders. The company failed, not because there wasn’t demand, but because we couldn’t fulfill it.

That was my first real lesson in fashion: if you don’t understand production and capacity, success can collapse under its own weight.

Label X, Brooklyn, and Betting on My Own Ideas

To be added soon.