Meet the Makers

A small but mighty workshop devoted to the delicate craft of garment finishing, Super Rush Trims, is located in New York’s historic Garment District. Rolls of fabric line the walls of the studio, and in the center of it all stands Sulé Griffith, founder. “I really just needed a job,” Sulé recalls from when he had just arrived in New York from Guyana, laughing softly. “Someone that I knew offered me a delivery job at a trims company. And that was the way I got in.”

That entry point—an errand job years ago—became the first stitch in what’s now a ten-year enterprise. After more than a decade learning every step of the process, from smocking to piping, Sulé was laid off. By then, he had already begun taking on “small orders here and there” for finishing projects, he says. “I just bought the first few machines and got started. And now, here we are.”

Super Rush Trims has since grown into a trusted finishing house for the city’s women’s ready-to-wear market, a sector that makes up about 80% of the domestic work they get. Bindings are their specialty—the clean edges and structured seams that give a coat its contour or a dress its polish. “Bindings are the way you finish a garment to make edges look clean and nice,” Sulé explains. From spaghetti straps and piping to bits of quilting, each detail is crafted to ensure that the piece looks and feels right when someone picks it up in a showroom.

Much of Sulé’s work happens in problem-solving mode. “Can I say everything?” he laughs when asked what he’s had to learn for his role. Clients often bring ambitious designs that push the limits of machinery. What sample-makers can accomplish doesn’t always translate to full-scale garment production, and Sulé prides himself on his ability to work around these limitations and find solutions.

“For instance, I’m working on a loop that looks like a spaghetti strap, but it has a top stitch on it. There is no one machine that can do all of that in one go,” he explains. “You kind of have to make it into a certain type of spaghetti in a specific way, and then add the top stitch to it.” Sometimes it’s a matter of precision cutting—like a client who wanted “only the red part of a stripe pattern to show on the pants.” It took trial and error, but when the final product matched the vision, “they were happy in the end. So that was the good part.”

Inside the shop, Sulé works alongside a small crew of four. “My main guy has knowledge of how everything works,” he says. “One of my employees, she’s good at specialty machines—spaghetti, piping, smocking.” Most employees arrive with limited experience, so training happens in-house. “There’s no school that’s going to teach you these specific trim-related things,” he says. “An employee I have with me now only knew how to stitch in a straight line when she first came.” That’s not the case anymore.

Quality control is personal. Before any piece leaves the workshop, Sulé inspects it himself. “We pay a lot of attention to detail,” he says. “That high level of quality usually leads to new orders from both existing and new clients.” That meticulousness is balanced by openness—many designers come in still brainstorming. “If you’re not sure what you want on the garment,” Sulé says, “I can help with problem solving.”

Beyond craftsmanship, Super Rush Trims has cultivated what visitors call “the vibe.” “Most people that come in love the vibe,” he says. “They’re like, ‘Oh my god, you guys have such a nice vibe here.’” It’s a blend of music, laughter, and quiet focus—a reminder that manufacturing, at its best, is both technical and human.