I dub thee "Seamstress"
Altering the social fabric of clothing consumption
Seamstress is a word that whispers. Seamstress has sibilance; it works quietly, gaze lowered, and gossips in hushed hisses. Seamstress is a word with body, like starched linen it holds itself neatly in place along the crisp curved S of the weft. As you can doubtless tell, I have always been partial to the term. I admit I felt more than a little disappointed when I learnt that the appropriate term for someone who sews as a hobby is actually sewist, and that I can not dub myself a seamstress. While I appreciate that sewist is gender neutral–which all hobbies and professions are—I will always have seamstress stitched under my rib.
The act of mending, altering, and making your own clothing (and that of your family) was typical for most of human history. It is only in the last fifty years, in the Global North, that admitting you made a garment yourself has been met with a flustered, “Well you’d never know,” as if you’d just confessed to tax fraud. But as it has become clear that the current consumer culture around clothing is not only unethical, but environmentally and financially unsustainable; I hope that attitude will change. The problems of waste, pollution, and worker exploitation are sparking calls for a system in which more individuals can take control of—and responsibility for—their own clothing. In the search for a new way of thinking about and producing clothing, I think it is helpful to look back and consider how the practices and challenges of sewists and seamstresses of the past might help our current system evolve.
Fabric has not always been produced in abundance; it was once a limited and valuable resource. Fabric production was a labor-intensive endeavour, dependent on natural fibres that had to be grown, transported, processed, spun, woven, dyed, and printed by hand. Dyes also had to be gathered and processed, and even the printing blocks were hand-carved. To hold a piece of fabric in your hand was to hold countless hours of labour, years of skill, and generations of knowledge. Fabric was valuable and as a result it was never wasted. Sewing patterns were designed to minimise off-cuts, unlike modern patterns, which often waste more fabric than they use; and techniques like piecing were employed to incorporate even the smallest pieces of cloth into a garment.
Garments were made to suit the wearer's body and practical needs (yes that means pockets!) as well as the fashions of the time—whether crafted by a professional or by the wearer themselves—making each garment inherently personal. Clothing was seen as a long term investment but also as something the owner had a responsibility to care for and maintain. Therefore items were designed to be altered, mended, and even passed down over time. The smallest scraps produced during the process were used for mending, patchwork quilts, and eventually rags or stuffing for cushions and furniture. Even aristocrats altered, redesigned, shared, and re-wore garments for different events.
As farming practices evolved and technology advanced, fabric production became increasingly automated, making fabric more widely available. The Victorian era was marked by the growth of the middle class and the industrialisation of manufacturing processes. Synthetic dyes were also introduced in 1856, making colours that were once exclusive to the upper classes more accessible to the general public. By the 1940s, synthetic fabrics had been developed for the war effort, significantly lowering the cost of fabric production, and consumer culture began to shift. People started moving away from homemade clothes in favour of buying “ready-to-wear” garments from department stores. It is at this point that people stopped considering themselves as makers of clothing and became consumers of it.
As demand for mass-produced clothing grew, clothing sizes needed to be standardised for shopper’s convenience. The sizes we use now are based on averages of the measurements of (mostly white) men and women in the 1950s and then adjusting in increments of approximately two centimetres, depending on the company. However, this method fails to account for variation in the distribution of fat and muscle in people of different sizes, meaning standardised sizes rarely fit anyone. Meanwhile, the spread of washing machines and tumble dryers—which saved mostly working-class women hours of labour—meant people no longer wanted clothes that required pressing or careful washing. Instead, they sought more new, affordable clothing that required less time-consuming care.
Trends began to move more quickly in the 1980s, as social and financial capital became firmly tied to your ability to keep up with “the latest.” More clothing was produced than ever before as garment manufacturing was moved to the Global South, where workers could be paid less in economies recovering from or labouring under colonial invasion. Online shopping began transforming the clothing industry in the early 2000s and fast fashion boomed with the rise of social media advertising and influencer culture in the 2010s. Fast fashion outlets now operate on between 50 and 100 “micro seasons” a year, producing clothing that lasts fewer than 10 washes. We wear 20% of our wardrobes 80% of the time, and of the 100 billion garments made each year, 92 million tonnes end up in landfill, much of it passing through second-hand stores first.
Many people recognise problems of fast fashion but, despite their discomfort, feel dependent on the system. Some believe their clothes are made by machines and that sewing is simply a skill they could never develop. This is a convenient narrative we are sold to erase the exploitation of garment workers and remove any sense of control and therefore responsibility. While robots can do things like cut and even fold fabric, they can’t actually sew it. Using a sewing machine is a skill that requires too much tactile feedback for current machines to process. This means there aren’t more clothes now because they are “cheaper to produce;” there are more clothes because we buy them, and because more people are making them than ever before (there were 91 million garment workers worldwide in 2022 compared to 1 million at the height of the Industrial Revolution). While much has changed in the garment industry, we haven’t left the dehumanisation of the workhouse behind—we’ve only created more nuanced doublethink to sustain it. Popular narratives around garment manufacture dismiss sewing as far too difficult and time-consuming for us to ever learn and simultaneously label the garment workers that make our clothes as 'unskilled labourers'.
For people who don't sew regularly it can seem like a hobby that belongs to gingham clad traditionalists who are overly concerned with the state of femininity and “the family”. If not property of the #tradwives, people see sewing as the environmental virtue signalling of those who insist you need a wardrobe of 100% reclaimed hemp. Either way, home sewing gets tangled up with the myths of frivolous femininity. The real social power of the skill is diminished because it is branded as something decorative and unnecessary. Home sewing is more likely to conjure an image of an embroidered wall hanging than a patch on the knee of your jeans. I don’t diminish the artistic and aesthetic value that needle crafts offer—I have included several images in this post to demonstrate that. But to limit the value of needle crafts to beauty is to ignore the environmental and economic importance of the crafts and skills of their craftspeople. Sewing is not about making yourself useful or subservient, or even about saving the planet; no single action will do that. What sewing can do—if you are lucky enough to have 15 minutes to try it—is give you the skills to change the way you interact with the consumer culture you have inherited, to rip it apart at the seams and remake the pieces into something that actually fits.
THANK YOU FOR READING!
Do you sew?
Would you consider learning?
How has the internet made you feel about the skill?
Let me know in the comments…
Ellen this piece is incredible!!!! My grandpa sews all the time and it’s a hobby I so badly want to adopt too! ❤️ Do you sew a lot of your own clothes??