Shinola is leading a Built In America manufacturing<br> movement from the city that refuses to stay down.

Since the first sparks of the industrial age, life in Detroit, Michigan’s most populous city, has been anything but vanilla. It has experienced the soaring highs of automotive domination along with the head-in-hands lows of social unrest and financial ruin. Its car industry may have driven into a wall, the city may have filed for bankruptcy protection only two years ago, but this hub of creativity and reinvention cares nothing for adversity.

In fact, Detroit is undergoing a creative revival. It’s a city steeped in architectural heritage, with some of the finest examples of Art Deco design in all the 50 states, as well as many spacious industrial buildings. In recent years, artists, writers and entrepreneurs have been drawn to repurpose such spaces, attracted not just by their size and beauty, but by their comparatively reasonable cost. One of the leaders on this front is American watchmaking, bicycle and leather goods brand Shinola, which in 2011 set up operations in the iconic former General Motors research lab, an imposing leviathan of Art Deco architecture that straddles the corner of West Milwaukee Avenue between 2nd and Cass Avenues. Today, on the fifth floor of the building (which is also home to the College of Creative Studies), you’ll find Shinola’s leather artisans, bicycle welders and watchmakers hard at work. That a monument to the great American automotive industry can become home to a new generation of American luxury manufacturers such as Shinola is testament to Detroit’s regenerative spirit, something that the brand is proud to be a part of. So much so that, for the first time this autumn, it is partnering with the College of Creative Studies to offer a collaborative Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree programme in fashion accessories design.

If a pride in working and living in Detroit is core to the brand’s ethos, it’s also visible in its designs. Nods to Detroit’s architectural heritage are deeply ingrained in Shinola’s watches, from the Art Deco numerals that appear on each watch’s face to the curved ribs of the brand’s signature steel crowns. Styles such as the unwaveringly masculine Runwell and Brakeman exude a certain industrial strength, powered by the Swiss-made but Detroit-built Argonite movement beneath. There’s a strength and resilience in Shinola’s leather goods, too, which are made with leather from another local hero – the Horween Leather Company – and handcrafted to last a lifetime (and not just your own). Like the city in which they’re born, these products have staying power.