Inspiring. Captivating. Titillating. Quite out of reach. And yet surprisingly, garments made by hand (partly, at least), aren't necessarily a danger to your wallet. In fact, I'm willing to stake my left pinky toe - who needs those anyway? - on each and every one of you having something made by hand in your closets. Unless you're not into sequins, embroidery and that kind of stuff, in which case I'll keep my toe, thank you very much.
Fact of the matter is, handmade clothes are not out of reach to us. It is true that most of the clothes we buy nowadays are sewn using sewing machines. Machines, however, cannot solve everything: some embellishments are too delicate, or would require highly sophisticated machinery, to be sewn on automatically. It's hard to know, but at the prices we usually pay for our clothes, we can safely assume that the factories producing them do not have the means to purchase this technology. Chances are I'm sharing old news, but I still wanted to write about it. Because weirdly enough, I had never ever considered how the sequins in my clothes came to be where they are, and I certainly didn't expect them to be the product of handicraft.
These are all details of clothes of mine. To produce something like this requires craftship, determination and precision. I marvel at whoever did this. Especially considering she (or he) is very likely one of the 30 million informal home-workers employed by the fashion industry who work in poor conditions and, according to the Self Employed Women's Association, do not even come near to earning minimum wage. Which I'm guessing is pretty low to start with in a country like India...
Lovely post and photos and something very thoughtful
ReplyDeleteI know there are scads of ladies in Great Britain and Scotland as well doing hand knits for major design houses which with all the hands on will come out quite marked up. There could be collectives coming up as the internet becomes a marketing tool for these amazing craftspeople.
Love thinking about this.
I am greatly concerned about the amount of long hour, back breaking hand sewing that must be done in developing countries to produce garments most people probably believe were made entirely on machines. I think, if we were to investigate, we would be appalled at just how much of "machine sewn" clothing isn't machined at all.
ReplyDeleteConsumption must have a conscience.
Thank you for commenting on Kyoto Maiko.
I am so grateful for your thoughtful comment! You are absolutely one hundred procent correct. Before reading Lucy Siegle's book (I'll do a review soon), I assumed everything I had was made by machines. It only goes to show how detached we are from the source of our clothes. And of course, even if they were made by machines, there are always humand hands operating them - in the most pitiful of conditions. Appalled doesn't even come near.
DeleteI'm not sure when I figured out that not all clothes came from machines. But then, I had a grandmother (still do, she's my last!) who handmade me all sorts of things, so I think I always knew that at least some garments were handmade. I'd say by my teenage years I was well aware of sweatshop labor and textile factory condition in the third world (and sometimes in the first!).
DeleteThank you for your very insightful post on Kyoto Maiko's "Keep calm..." I will be writing a verbose response shortly.
If the clothing I buy looks gorgeous I don't mind paying a couple of extra euro's for it. Especially for the reasons you've mentioned. A great post and we should always be aware of it. The pictures you posted are absolutely gorgeous and I love that kind of detail in clothing. Chances are, indeed, that I have something handmade in my closet. I muchly appreciate it. :-)
ReplyDeleteThank you! By the way, I'm browsing through your blog and am stunned by your photography. Bookmarking!
DeleteGORGEOUS textures!! =)
ReplyDeletepinkchampagnefashion.blogspot.com
I'm sitting here stunned. I'd honestly thought that kind of handiwork was typically done by machine now. I'm going to have to go look at all my clothing now. That's disturbing. I will definitely be looking at clothes differently now before I purchase. I try to stick with charity shop purchases because I'm already very aware how easy it is to get lost in consumerism. Even those will be getting closer inspection from now on. Goodness, thank you for this post. Absolutely following you from now.
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