( DEPARTURES.com ) -- A trip to Nashville , Tennessee , and Florence , Alabama , unearths a bounty of Southern-made artisanal luxuries . One day , while standing on a street corner in Vienna in the late summer , designer Natalie Chanin realized suddenly that August should really mean sunshine and fresh tomatoes . The Alabama native was a successful , Paris-based stylist working on a film set in Austria at the time , living out of a suitcase and wondering if she had packed enough winter clothes . That realization led to an overhaul and reconfiguration of her life , culminating several years later when she returned to her hometown of Florence , Alabama , to launch her sustainable-clothing label , Project Alabama . Now in its second evolution as Alabama Chanin , the award-winning line is still based in a warehouse just north of Florence . What about the South pulled her back and continues to do so for others ? We flew down to find out . The South of the northern imagination—that memorialized by William Faulkner , Flannery O'Connor , Harper Lee and Robert Penn Warren—is afflicted by its past and lost in the present . Ironic , then , that much of this decade 's Southern renaissance is built on the foundations of old traditions : quilting , work clothes , garden kitchens , comfort food . We once mistook this elegant clarity for oversimplification . But in today 's hyper-communicative , superfast , deeply insecure culture , tradition has been reanimated into a new worldly form . Florence , with a population of 39,000 , sits on the Tennessee River in Alabama 's northwestern corner , a two-hour drive from any of the nearest three airports . It calls itself `` Alabama 's Renaissance City '' and has more clothing labels than restaurants . ( Visit one of Alabama Chanin 's monthly retreats and take a tour of the studio . ) To fill that void , we flew into Nashville first—an old metropolis of the New South—for the food alone . The longtime music capital has always been home to the creative and the cosmopolitan , but the new two-feet-on-the-ground sophistication of the cooking has attracted the attention of a much wider audience , and the city is having a moment . Areas outside the city center , like 12th Avenue South and East Nashville , are being reengineered from the inside out . An old gas station has been converted into a store for tailored denim by the label Imogene + Willie ; an 18th-century factory building houses City House , one of the best restaurants in town ; and an old trailer is the mobile vintage-clothing store High Class Hillbilly . We crave the locally made finds that have the simplicity of an heirloom tomato . And right now , it 's all about returning to roots—something the South most definitely provides . Here are our 10 new reasons to love the old South . © 2010 American Express Publishing Corporation . All rights reserved .
The trip through Nashville and Florence is lined with one-of-a-kind American treasures . The creative heritage of the Old South is alive and thriving in Tennessee and Alabama . Evocative products like denim and peaches reach couturish heights in the modern South .