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November 16, 2018 (a day late!!!)
OK - so doing these all-nighters are still fun for me, and are still exhilerating, however they do cause me to forget things (like it's Thursday night and I need to be meeting a dealine for Friday, but can't remember!!!) So Saturday is better than Sunday, and Monday and......well, you get the idea!!!
This headline really caught my eye the other day, and for me it couldn't be better news. In a free country where the market sets the trends, common sense really does rule out as well as a comment for the times.
With the average college or university education puts a student with a $393 monthly payment, that digs a lot into a graduates income.
The reality is that a person going to trade school (some programs are even in high school, so that students graduate from high school with payable jobs, while they may attend a trade school to increase that income), can have an intro salary of $40K to $50K to start with. That's a nice hunk of change to start out life WITHOUT the $50K/year hickey for that college degree. That means these
students start out in the black and not the red to begin life.
Granted trade school isn't for everyone, but by the same logic, college/university degrees aren't for everyone. The students who go to trade schools run into one big obstacle: their parents. Their parents believe that the only way to get ahead and make a good living is to go to college.....period! But this new Generation Z sees the reality, and even though their parents may not be on
board, once they see the first paycheck, they are astounded.
Many of my friends' kids work horrible grunt hours in their corporate/college-degree jobs to earn enough creds to be considered to stay on at the company they are working. Hours like 5am to 9pm are not uncommon, and even glorified by their parents and friends. One family member fell into this trap, but his wife finally put down the hammer and said, no to those kind of hours. She understands 9am to 5pm but
not the other way around and didn't want to loose him to his work only to have him be a stranger to her and their kids.
Generation Z is seeing the same thing - more money for no-debt education. It's a hard economic fact to ignore. The teachers and mentors in these trade school can't emphasize enough how much the infrastructure is falling apart and the marketplace is crying out for young tradespeople to come into the field to work in this field.
For me, what I see is that people are coming back to working with their hands (and their brains). There is not only the rise in pay, which is what is going to jump-start the trend back to trade type work, but there is also using one's brain. In these jobs, there is never a day that a person will not go out there on the jobsite and it may not be immediately clear, or the job may be so specific, that there was
nothing taught exactly like this in trade school. So the trained trades person has to figure out how to solve the problem with the education that he/she has had. This sort of problem-solving action by the brain, research has shown, is one of the main methods humans use to not only stave off senility, but can even avoid it altogether. It's the problem-solving aspect of this sort of work that not only prolongs the mind, but keeps that mind fully active and functioning for a
long time.
But this rise in the popularity of trade-type work, signifies something else. This translates not only into fixing infrastructure, but fixing other things as well and in particular clothing. Cause what comes right behind trade school is sewing. Sewing and shop classes in the mid-20th century education system, not only educated people how to fix things, but how things work. Not all of them went into trades
that they learned in sewing and shop classes, but they knew how they worked and they knew how tings were properly made. That's important because when those people went out to hire a plumber or carpenter or purchase a thing-a-ma-jig or clothing, they knew how it was supposed to go together so it would last. They were very savvy consumers.
This week, Walt and I have been on his farm. We came up here to watch them pick cotton with these huge behemoth machines that pick the plant, strip the cotton from the plant, then bale it into 4100 pound-bales. From there the cotton gin company picks them up where they are sorted, ginned, graded and sold.
This is a fascinating process (and I promise I'll do a post on this next week), but more than anything it has put my mind in the mode of how fabric, in particular, how cotton is made, and the path that it takes from the ground to the back of the sewist or consumer. This is always fascinating to me, because it shows what America does best. There are countless co-ops, entrepreneurs, inventors and the we makers, who
all use our hands and brains, to make this process complete. The makers in this whole process know how things work.
Not only does this smash to smitherines the idea that clothes are NOT simple, easy and fast to create, but it also creates an appreciation and desire for well-made clothes as well as other things. What this does create is the value of clothing and even more, the value of well-made clothing vs throw-away clothing.
For most of my life, I have been spoiled in that I have had excellently-made clothing. My mother believed in well-made clothing, as there were three of us girls and hand-me-downs were far more economical than buying clothes over and over again. Also classic styles were timeless and they looked good and fashionable all the time. From there I had a few years where I purchased all my clothes when I was doing my Mary Tyler Moore imitation and the first years of my
marriage. This was during the 1970's when clothes were still well-made and clothes sold in the US were mostly made in the US.
But then I met my mentor. After that, I made most of my clothing. If I wanted something, I made it - it was that simple. My main drive in sewing was to have what I wanted, in the color I wanted, in the size I wanted, in the style I wanted and yes, at the price I wanted, although this later was the whipped cream on top of the desert for me. And when I made it, the garment lasted and lasted and lasted. Some of my clothes are 30 and 40 years old. And when I
say that and tell my students that, they get a blank stare on their face as if I have just said, and you too can own a gold bouillon bar too! Their eyes glaze over and they're like: "Yeah, right Claire - you really don't have to exaggerate to make your point!"
The take-away for me with this headline, is that the consumer is about to understand the value of well-made garments. For one thing, the price will increase, and it will increase substantially. There will always be that throw-away market, and it will never shrink, but as the consumer begins to understand the value and economical thrift of purchasing and having well-made garments in their wardrobes, the market will be there. At the same time, the value of sewing increases
to the point that sewing becomes much more popular and that then drives a market to serve that sewing enthusiasts.
This won't be over night, but as we see more and more of this Generation Z entering into the trades market schools, there will be more of a market for retail that supports and caters to these consumers who know how things are made and there will be more of a market for these makers - in all fields of making!
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PS - I do a lot of posting on Facebook as both Claire Kennedy and SewingArtistry - if you want to friend me to check out the goodies over there for free!
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