Natalie Chanin started Project Alabama, a fashion line made in Alabama that employs over 150 local women to hand stitch high-end clothing with price tags as high as $17,500 per piece. Chanin was inspired to launch the line in her hometown after leaving New York, hoping to create jobs and revive the struggling textile industry in Alabama which has lost thousands of jobs in recent years. The garments are made from recycled materials and each hand stitched piece carries the initials of the woman who made it. While an unusual concept, the line is popular with fashionistas and has become a multi-million dollar business helping cultivate jobs and homemade pride in Alabama.

1. Designer Puts Ala. On Fashion Map
And, as CBS News Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi reports, the women behind the trendy label are
more country than cosmo. All rights reserved. Then, women like Diane Hall, who grew up quilting,
sew it, creating couture with a costly $17,500 price tag.
Some people will ask why didn't she just send it off to China.
"They had ever-moving hands, always doing something- shelling peas, or sewing or making
something to kind of enrich everyone's lives," says Chanin. One hundred fifty mothers and
grandmothers, like Shelby Wade, stitch each piece by hand, at home.
Copyright 2005 CBS.
"On the little tag in the back I put my initials S.W." says Wade.
"It's worth every penny, let me put it that way, because there's a lot of hours, a lot of love that goes
into these garments," says Hall.

2. The same women who covet Prada and dream of Armani now have their eyes focused on a new label,
and it's flying off the shelves and onto the shoulders of fashionistas who are willing to pay thousands
for one-of-a-kind pieces.
It's called Project Alabama.
And now, just behind that homeis the humble headquarters of a multi-million dollar fashion house.

3. Natalie Chanin started it all. Creating jobs and pride in her hometown one simple stitch at a time.
Chanin says the designs are inspired bythe sounds and sights of northern Alabama. At a career
crossroads, she left New York to launch her high-fashion line where she grew up -- where her
grandfather built his house and raised his family.
Recyled t-shirts are cut, painted and packed up here. .
That's right, Alabama.
Irons says Chanin's business model could be the pattern to revive a struggling textile industry.
"Our community has lost about 3,500 jobs in the textile industry over four years," says Florence
Mayor Bobby Irons.
It's a big idea from a small town where homemadeand handmade have always been in Vogue. "It
never occurred to me," says Chanin, laughing.
But she's doing more than cultivating high-fashion, she's cultivating jobs in Alabama, a state that's
lost thousands of textile jobs over the last few years.
And that's Chanin's goal today