Love it? Check the label

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: Until recently, Bill Allayaud, who works as a director for the Sierra Club in Sacramento, thought people who checked labels on clothing or toys to make sure they were “Made in the USA” were everything he was not: flag-waving, protectionist, even a little xenophobic. But lately, he said, he is becoming one of them.

“Everything I buy now, I look at the label,” said Allayaud, 56, who explained that the “buy American” movement—long popular among blue-collar union workers and lunch-pail conservatives—no longer seemed so jingoistic, and was actually starting to come into vogue for liberals like himself who never before had a philosophical problem with Japanese cars or French wine.

He said the reasons for his change of heart are many: a desire to buy as many “locally made” products as possible to reduce carbon emissions from transporting them; a worry about toxic goods made in the third world; and a concern that the rising tide of imports will damage the economy and hurt everybody.

“Every time you see ‘Made in China’,” he said, “you think, ‘wait a minute, something’s not right here’.”

“Made in the USA” used to be a label flaunted primarily by consumers in the Rust Belt and rural regions. Increasingly, it is a status symbol for cosmopolitan bobos, and it is being exploited by the marketers who cater to them.

For many the label represents a heightened concern for workplace and environmental issues, consumer safety and premium quality. “It involves people wanting to have guilt-free affluence,” Alex Steffen, who is the executive editor of www.worldchanging.com, a website devoted to sustainability issues, said in an e-mail message.

With so many mass-market goods made off-shore, American-made products, which are often more expensive, have come to connote luxury. New Balance produces less expensive running shoes abroad, but it still makes the top-of-the-line 992 model—which the company says requires 80 manufacturing steps and costs $135—in Maine. American Apparel, which carries the label “Made in Downtown LA” in every T-shirt and minidress, famously brought sex appeal to clothing basics that are promoted as “sweatshop free”. In the process it won the allegiance of young taste-makers.