Quoted: When Clothing Was As Precious as Metal and Stones

Detail of a silk dress from the 1830s, from the American Textile History Museum in Lowell

"In the West, apparel has been expensive to produce and has therefore been a high-priced and valuable commodity for centuries. Once fashioned, garments had long and varied lives. A dress or jacket might be born as special occasion wear, then become a garment for indoor sociability, and eventually be worn (and worn out) while doing domestic chores... In some households, garments were turned into quilting squares... A piece of clothing might end its useful life as a rag, and literally turn to dust.

... From the seventeenth century through the mid-nineteenth century, apparel was a primary medium of exchange, second only to metals and precious stones."
--Economist Juliet Schor, in Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth.

I came across this quote today in a book I was reading, and thought it tied in perfectly with our lively discussion and poll yesterday about the price—and value—of sewing today.

In contrast to the history of apparel, we have today's sad reality:

Bales of used clothing waiting to be turned into rags

"This history puts the nearly free gently worn garments of the early twenty-first century into sharp relief. The United States has been piling up mountains of clothing that have virtually no value... The production system drives businesses to use natural resources at hyperspeed, and the consumer system makes the resulting products redundant almost as fast. It's a recipe for disaster."

Plenitude (aka True Wealth) is not specifically about the fashion industry (for that, I'd recommend Overdressed), but Schor uses fast fashion and its devastating effects on workers and the environment as a case study for what has gone so wrong in our "business as usual" economy.

As a solution she presents her philosophy of plenitude, downshifting and sustainable living, which is in a large part about creating instead of consuming:

"The second principal of plenitude... is to diversify from the business-as-usual market and "self-provision", or make, grow or do things for oneself... Plenitude aspires to transform self-provisioning from a marginal craft movement into something economically significant."

I haven't finished the book yet, but I've always loved Schor's ideas—she was briefly my college women's studies advisor (before I switched majors to social anthropology and visual arts) and taught one of the most fun, engaging and thought-provoking classes I've ever taken, "Shop Til You Drop: Gender and Class in Consumer Culture."

I think I'll be grabbing those old wornout clothes and sheets I was going to take to be recycled and tearing them to use instead of paper towels!

So what do you think — now that clothing has been so devalued in our society, is there anything we can do to recover that value and respect for our garments? Is apparel doomed to lie on the dollar-a-pound pile of history? Will it ever again be precious as stones?

Can Home Sewing Save Us from the Evils of the Cheap Fashion Industry?

"Fashion largely deserves its bad reputation. It's now a powerful, trillion-dollar global industry that has too much influence over our pocketbooks, self-image and storage spaces. It behaves with embarrassingly little regard for the environment or human rights."
—Elizabeth Cline, in Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion

The most inspiring sewing book I've read in years is not really a sewing book at all—it contains no patterns, no tips, no brightly colored how-to diagrams or pattern-matching instructions.

Instead, Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion is a trip into the heart of the clothing industry of today—and yesterday—a personal history, and maybe even a bit of a slow fashion (or even slow sewing) manifesto.

This book was a more compelling call to get back to my sewing machine than any of the adorable and colorfully packaged sewing how-to books and pattern books I own. Thrifting, making and mending our own clothes won't solve the global environmental, labor and human rights disaster that is the rise of the cheap fashion industry--but they can't hurt, either. (And they may be the only way that those of us on a really tight budget can opt out—to some degree, anyway—of giving our hard-earned dollars to the undeserving cheap fashion industry).

Cline does an excellent (and even entertaining) job of breaking down the life (and afterlife) of cheap fashion, and its effects on the planet, human rights, domestic clothing jobs, the economy and more. As aware as I'd like to think I am, I quickly realized I knew very little about the history and present-day reality of retail clothing production.

She visits New York and L.A.'s Garment Districts, clothing factories in China and Bangladesh, thrift store charities overwhelmed with unusable donations of cheap crap, textile recyclers, vintage sellers, shuttered garment factories throughout the U.S. She talks to fashion designers, factory owners, cheap fashion addicts who post their large hauls on Youtube and luxury fashion addicts with soaring credit card debt.

She also gets into the nitty-gritty of how garments are priced (underpriced at the low end, and overpriced at the luxury end), and what those costs do—and don't—include.

A smart and inspiring read--and call to action!--Cline's book has been aptly called the Fast Food Nation or Ominivore's Dilemma of the fashion industry. A few surprises for me:

• New York's Garment District—which I tend to think of mainly as an excellent fabric shopping resource—was once actually the main factory center of retail garment manufacturing in the U.S. (Sorry if this was obvious to all of you—I never really thought about it!).
• One of the reasons the cost of good-quality vintage clothing has gone up so much is that it's one of the last ways textile recyclers (who purchase unsold second-hand clothes and rags from Goodwill and similar charities) can actually make any money, since most of the clothes they receive are worthless poorly-made H&M-esque crap.
• In the 1990s, 50 percent of clothing purchased in the U.S. was still made in the U.S. Now it's more like 2 percent. (Quoting this from memory, as I don't have my copy of the book in front of me).

Throughout Overdressed, she also talks about the rise and fall of home sewing and mending—which used to be the main way women of modest and middle incomes were able to afford to keep their clothes up-to-date and in good repair. Towards the end of the book, Cline talks about the resurgence in home sewing and interviews a few sewists and make-do-and-menders, and even buys her own sewing machine.

"My opinion on home sewing is that it’s already so much more sustainable than buying off-the-rack clothes from a huge chain store. Home sewers are part of the solution, not the problem. I know that resources for home sewers have dwindled over the years. Parts of the country don’t even have fabric shops. I think the more immediate goal should be to grow the number of home sewers before we tackle issue of where their fabric is being sourced."
—Cline, in a recent interview on Pattern Review

After I finished the book, I was so fired up I immediately:

• whipped up the polka dot dress I shared recently
• began an obsessive inquiry into life, the universe and the meaning of STUFF and the materials economy, including reading Annie's Leonard's fantastic book The Story of Stuff (you do NOT want to know what goes into the making of a simple "cheap" white T-shirt or the costs to the environment, human rights and human health that get left out of that "low" price tag!) and checking out Greenpeace's "Detox Now" campaign
• made a gazillion trillion plans for next projects, which were then promptly derailed when...
• my 2-year-old learned out to climb out of her crib at night and we had to convert it to a toddler bed... upon which point she decided she wanted to party around the living room singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" until past midnight. Every night. And even when she does go to bed, by 2 a.m. we hear the pitter patter of little feet and she's crawling into our bed to kick us in the back all night long...

Sigh. So it goes.

What inspiring sewing reads have you picked up lately?

P.S. Did any of you watch the Project Runway All Stars episode a while back featuring the fabulous Nanette Lepore giving the contestants a lesson in estimating costs and designing garments to be sewn in a New York Garment Center factory? I've always admired her designs, but found it especially cool that she's one of a few "mid-range" (i.e. sadly way out of my budget but what a good quality garment ACTUALLY costs to make) designers who still manufactures here in the U.S...

P.P.S. One thing to remember—which I forgot to mention above—is that no matter how cheap a garment is, it was NOT spit out by a magic garment-making machine. Someone, somewhere, somehow, physically sat down at a sewing machine and sewed every seam on that $2 tank top or that $5 T-shirt.

Polka Dot Wardrobe Domination: Week #1 (A Little Help from Lucky)

"If you're anything like me, deep down all you really want is a closet filled with your favorite things. These are the clothes that make you happy to put on, that make you feel like yourself. Instead, many of us feel that we have a closet stuffed with clothes and nothing we want to wear."
--Sarai Mitnick, The Colette Sewing Handbook (Chapter Two: A Thoughtful Plan)

"So it's strapless and you can't wear strapless bras... and it doesn't quite fit... and the zipper's busted... and it's kind of a bad color for you, but what if someday you wear it with some really cute cardigan or you sew some straps on it... and it was such a find... and you dont have another one like it, so, well... um..."
--The Voices in the Back of My Head When I am Decluttering, Mikhaela's Brain (Chapter 3: Just Shove it In the Back of the Sock Drawer)

So I realized that before plowing headfirst into a ton of random on-a-whim sewing projects, I should step back and evaluate my existing wardrobe and ruthlessly eliminate anything that doesn't fill a need, suit my style/life/lifestyle or make me ridiculously happy, and ask deep probing questions like "Why the hell is my sweater drawer stuffed with 20 pairs of threadbare high-waisted maternity panties?"

THEN I can really start adding new, fun and exciting yet totally wearable stuff, right?

I used to do this every six months--I'd try a ton of stuff on, prance back in forth in front of the full-length, listen to Peter Walsh's "It's All Too Much" audiobook, and be really, truly ruthless. My last great purge was during my pregnancy (shoes gone by here) in order to make room for baby.

Since then, things have gotten out of hand. My husband does most (er, all) of the laundry and just shoves things away in random drawers when I don't get around to it myself in reasonable time (thank you honey!). I've barely done any shopping, but since I only have 8 small drawers and half a small closet for ALL my clothes and shoes (including off-season and special occasion), everything is squished, squashed, wrinkled and unreachable.

With a little elbow grease, I can extract about five or six tops, a few sweaters and a single pair of jeans, so I wear them over and over and over again. Repeatedly.

So I'm going to attempt one drawer per night and then the closet until I'm done. I have some helpers, too (ignore the spelling error on the binder, please!):

1. The Lucky Shopping Manual: Building and Improving Your Wardrobe Piece by Piece. I don't even read Lucky anymore, but I read this book over and over. It really helps me think about what's in my wardrobe in a smart, fun and inspirational way. There's a section for each general item--skirts, pants, suits, lingerie, shoes, coats, bag, etc--with suggestions on basic wardrobe needs, different types of the item, when to save, when to splurge... It's nearly ten years old but doesn't feel at all dated. (Just ignore the advice about which clothing styles are best suited for which figure type--I certainly do).
   
   
2. My binders of inspirational style clippings from assorted fashion magazines and clothing catalogs. What with the advent of Polyvore (and now Pinterest, and the dilemma over what to capture where...?!) I don't update these anymore, but it's more fun to page through than the digital versions.
   

So, yes: all systems go! And then to the fun sewing planning stuff.

How about you all--how's your New Year's wardrobe planning going?

P.S. I don't really recommend Lucky's newer book, by the way: The Lucky Guide to Mastering Any Style. It was a total disappointment--the only style I related to at all was "Bombshell", but it was a really pigeonholed and by-the-book version of bombshell--I didn't need a book to lay it out for me:

P.P.S. After your excellent comments and some Deep Introspection, I've decided to throw all caution to the wind and sew up my wide-legged corduroy trousers WITHOUT A SINGLE COMPLEX ALTERATION to the pattern. I never do this so it scares me, but if I cut wide enough seam allowances (1") I think I'll be able to force myself.