The opening of the Williamsburg Garment Company's dedicated retail shop at 42 West St. in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, is the second stake in the ground for designer Maurice Malone’s efforts to rebuild the American denim industry.
Combined with its manufacturing facility across the road at 67 West St., Malone has created a self-described denim hub with designing, manufacturing and educating around denim. The hub includes a denim alteration service, where you can book a tailor on the WGC website.
The store and manufacturing facility are a Made-In-America growth story, and a throwback to Greenpoint's manufacturing roots, but also a continuation of Malone taking a culture he's passionate about and building a community around it.
Malone’s first fashion foray to New York City was in 1989, when he designed a collection while living in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. His designs made some noise, but he ultimately moved back to Detroit in 1990. He opened the Hip-Hop Shop in Detroit in 1993, as both a retail location and Hip-Hop cultural center.
They sold Hip-Hop mixtapes, magazines and clothes, but also had in-store DJs and open-mic rap battles where artists like Proof from D-12 and Eminem frequently honed their skills.
Fast-forward to 2026, and Malone has created a hub for denim.
The name Maurice Malone should ring a bell if you were tapped into Hip-Hop culture in the 1990s, because the Maurice Malone Designs brand was major and Zeitgeisty from the mid-to-late 1990s. His CV has a detailed history of successes and setbacks, which has made Malone resilient and dedicated to his vision.
The WGC launched in 2011 with raw indigo denim collections and fits named after streets and avenues in Brooklyn, and transitioned toward domestic production with the debut of its "Made In The U.S.A." Hope Street jeans in 2013.
He opened with a super lean operation: just himself.
"I wanted to prove that one person could start and run a brand that looked like it was a major corporation, but with just one person using the technology of the day," Malone said.
The retail portion of the operation was the front of the manufacturing facility, separated by a clothing rack and boxes.
That setup gave quaint craftsman vibes to customers, but the new retail shop, designed by interior designer Maria Christina Niño, shines a brighter light on the WGC collection. That light is both figurative and literal, as the shop's wall of windows set against the Manhattan skyline view from the East River illuminates the jeans from rivet to stitch. The shop also carries hard-to-find denim brands like Momotaro, Burgus Plus and Benzak Denim Developers.
“To rebuild the American denim industry, we need a community that supports an ecosystem," Malone said. "I'm doing denim workshops from the ground up on how to make jeans, teaching them everything from making patterns with the Tukatuck software to using industrial machines to sew the jeans."
Williamsburg Garment Company also opens its factory up for small brands and designers. With small minimum orders of 25 pieces, a start-up fashion brand can have a denim collection produced right here in Brooklyn.
