A year-old effort by current and former Detroiters to establish a hub for fashion design and manufacturing in Detroit is starting to show signs of progress.

A local coalition of clothing makers that includes Carhartt Inc., Detroit Denim, Lazlo and Shinola is planning to start a pilot manufacturing plant in February that will contract with apparel companies on small clothing orders and serve as an ongoing apprenticeship training center.

It's among initiatives seeking to help make Detroit a fashion hub at the nexus of design and manufacturing.

The nonprofit Industrial Sewing And Innovation Center has gained approval from the U.S. Department of Labor to operate an apprenticeship program for clothing production that will mix traditional sewing skills with the industry's future use of robotic assembly, said Jen Guarino, vice president of manufacturing for Shinola.

"What we've done is create a new model for a new ecosystem for apparel manufacturing in Detroit," Guarino said last week at Detroit Homecoming V. "We don't have to deconstruct something that doesn't work. We get to build it from the ground up — and we can do it right by tapping into Detroit's manufacturing DNA."

Tracy Reese, a native Detroiter whose internationally recognized clothing line is carried by Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's and Neiman Marcus, plans to move her New York company's design operation to Midtown, hoping to tap into a talent pool of designers coming out of the College for Creative Studies.

"I'm shifting the back end of my business — the design end — to Detroit," said Reese, who has a store in Manhattan's Garment District. "The front end will remain in New York — sales and outreach."

Reese is on the board of ISAIC. The local leaders of the group weren't ready to announce the location of the manufacturing facility at Detroit Homecoming last week. But they say they have orders from clothing companies in place to start producing 3,000 units per month in February.

At the same time, a former Detroiter and longtime fashion industry executive said he's in talks with an international clothing brand to on-shore manufacturing from Asia to the Motor City.Jeffry Aronsson, a former CEO of Donna Karan International, has spent the past year leading an initiative for Mayor Mike Duggan called Project Treadwing that seeks to scale up Detroit's fledgling fashion apparel industry. Aronsson first presented the idea at the 2017 Detroit Homecoming and gave an update at last week's gathering of former Detroiters — an annual event produced by Crain's Detroit Business.