Levi's and Carhartt vintage pieces still command premium prices at European boutiques like Milan's Union Fade, but American garment factories that once made these clothes have largely vanished. Domestic manufacturing withered as free trade and Reaganomics dismantled the postwar supply chain that built American cultural reach.

The author, a Norwegian-born academic who became a U.S. citizen, traces how American style once traveled globally on the back of military presence and physical goods. By the 1980s and '90s, production shifted abroad. Japan preserved vintage looms in Okayama that still produce the denim tied to America's sartorial golden age.

Demand for pre-internet American style remains strong — social media has inflated appetite for vintage aesthetics. Yet the material world that created these garments is gone. Classic American clothing functions as collectible, not commercial product. The supply chain behind it won't return.