When I tell people I’m a clothing designer, many express amazement that I know how to sew, and use a sewing machine. Sewing is something our grandmothers did, but who has time for that now? Today clothing is generally bought from a rack and most people don’t think twice about how it got there. On the other hand, there is a growing consumer consciousness towards buying local to reduce waste and pollution and to support local economies. Food is one example of this trend, and eating locally grown produce is also recognized for it’s benefits to health. So how does clothing fit into this trend? We need all need to eat, and we all need to wear clothes. We can generally find local produce at our grocery stores, but what about clothing? When and how did we as a society lose this basic skill?
Before sewing machines, nearly all clothing was made locally. Most towns had tailors and seamstresses that would make individual items of clothing for customers, but most people couldn’t afford them. Instead, women sewed pants, shirts and dresses for their families by hand, using a needle and thread. It took about 14 hours to make a man’s shirt and 10 hours for a simple dress. Women often worked days at a time and long into nights making and mending their families’ clothing.
The idea of a machine that could sew had captured the imaginations of many inventors around the world, but was highly controversial. Tailors feared losing their livelihoods, and actually burned down the world’s first machine-based clothing factory a few years after it opened in France in 1830.
In America, concerns about sewing machines centered around the possible consequences of women having too much time on their hands. With machines to speed up the work of making and mending garments, it was argued, women would surely go wild with shopping, playing cards, and who knows what else. Isaac Singer (inventor of the Singer sewing machine) himself, before realizing the monetary potential of the sewing machine, is said to have exclaimed, “You want to do away with the only thing that keeps women quiet – their sewing!”
Once his business venture was underway, however, Singer became a fierce promoter. It was not an easy idea to sell in the mid 1900’s. Women were considered much too delicate to run anything mechanical and not bright enough to manage such a complicated instrument. To convince people that women really could handle these intricate mechanisms, he used women in demonstrations to potential buyers and advertised that even a child could use them. He marketed sewing machines as a time saver that would allow women more time to care for their families and, gradually, the public was won over.
The main challenge then became cost. The original price of a sewing machine was equivalent to the cost of a car today. Owning a sewing machine in the early days was a status symbol. Sometimes several families would pool their resources in buying and using a sewing machine. In 1956, the Singer Company offered the first installment plan, the precursor of the modern credit economy. Not only did this multiply sales and make owning a sewing machine possible for the average family, it also changed the way we manage our money.
While the invention of the sewing machine facilitated an easier production of clothing at home, it also spurred the development of the ready-made clothing industry. With the advent of electricity, clothes could be made even faster and factory-made clothing became more and more prevalent.
Today, clothing produced in overseas factories is the norm. In the last 150 years, clothing has gone from being made by the hand of a single person (usually your wife or mother), to being mass-produced in China or Indonesia by several poorly paid people (often children), each repeating a single process over and over again for the long duration of the work day. The ecological costs of shipping clothing across the world is also extraordinary, with severe environmental consequences associated with oil consumption and pollution.
Clearly, most people nowadays don’t feel like spending their lives sewing. But isn’t there another alternative to the oppression and pollution of mass-production? The answer is YES! Many big-name clothing companies such as Roots, Men’s Work Warehouse and Tilley are choosing to keep at least some of their production local. Other internationally recognized design houses such as Joseph Ribkoff, based in Montreal, have made a conscious decision to manufacture exclusively in Canada. There are also lots of small, independent designers today who actually enjoy sewing and produce their designs themselves or hire local help for small runs. These designers harness the constructive power of the sewing machine to create pieces of clothing with love and attention, and avoid the waste, pollution, and socio-economic traps of factory mass-production. In my opinion, it’s the best of both worlds.
Google your area for locally-made clothing and independent designers of hand-made clothing, or find them on Etsy.com and Artfire.
Referrences:
http://ezinearticles.com/?A-Brief-History-of-Sewing-Machines&id=73917
http://www.historyofquilts.com/sewmach.html
http://www.moah.org/exhibits/virtual/sewing.html
http://inventors.about.com/od/indrevolution/a/clothing.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barthélemy_Thimonnier
possible without the behind-the-scenes magic of stylist-extraordinaire Sandra and photo wizard 
and trying to stay in control...like I usually do, I could actually relax and just enjoy the day. What a treat! It was his idea to do the shoot outdoors. This worried me initially, since the weather had been dicy, but of course the day was perfect. I watched in awe as Ari took the models up balconies, down alleys, and even into the middle of the street! All with absolute confidence, ease, and light-heartedness. All the pictures were taken within the three hours we had to do them, and we finished the shoot on schedule at precisely 6pm. By 8, I had all the photos on a disc and Ari gave me another disc of the finished photos from the ones we selected together the following day. I am now convinced that there is nothing 
