August 21, 2020

For a long time, I've been wanting, promoting, and expecting a change in fashion. The problem is that this way of clothing manufacturing that was so alluringly profitable caused all other types of clothing manufacturing and production to fall by the wayside. It was like this really cheap way of making clothes, and the consumer got so hooked on the pricing structure that the financiers and beancounters and investment backers all thought it was the only way to do business. When young designers, in their search to create a model by which employees were paid a living wage and have it a lasting way of doing business, present their case to financial sources, they simply scoffed at it, and hit the local Starbucks for coffee to finagle the next season's fashion at a lower price.

The dilapidated factories, the exposés on the poor pay and slave labor, the dangerous working conditions, and even political prisoners forced into slave labor to make clothing across all brands and makes became the normal way of doing business. Political prisoners, Uighurs, have been revealed as making clothes for prominent companies like Nike, Apple, BMW, Sony Google, Lacoste, and Nintendo. The Uighurs (pronounced we'-gars) were a once autonomous ethnic group in China. They are being persecuted by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) by procuring them for slave labor and organ harvesting.



Click the above link for footage of Uighurs being shipped to "re-education" camps.

For many in the fashion industry, this has gone on too long. Companies like American Giant have been trying to buck this trend of cheap clothing. It's not as profitable, but it's far better and far more sustainable. But companies like this are not the norma. They are the exception. They survived and started because of some out-of-the-box thinking either from a financier's point of view or because the company founders had enough financial backing on their own to start their business.  

 

Now there are more developments from a wealth point of view in China. The wealthier and more premium products, employees, and stores survive the pandemic better than the lower earners. 

 

Driving the trend: the relative stability of upper-middle-class incomes in China throughout the pandemic. Many white-collar workers are able to work and ride out the crisis from home. In contrast, up to 80 million Chinese people, mainly lower earners in services and manufacturing, have lost their jobs this year due to the pandemic, according to the state-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. 

From Wall Street Journal 8/19/2020*

 

New businesses and alternative prospects to clothing sales, which have been on the fringe (to make fashion and retail just as affordable as the maligned fast-cheap fashion business model), are now being embraced on a broader scale. Instead of dumping unsold items, some luxury retailers resorted to destroying their luxury goods to prevent them from ending up in the resale and budget shops, thus destroying their luxury status even more. Retailers like Selfridges in the UK (Selfridges is one of the top department stores like Harrod's or Fortnum and Mason's) are embracing selling concepts like certification for materials. This certification will tell consumers where the contents are from and how sustainable the products, manufacturing, and sources are. Another selling concept is circularity, which is the resale, rented, and/or repaired market, to get away from the fast-cheap fashion business model.

 

Reselling is the easiest to carry off. Online merchants like Vestiaire and peer-to-peer reseller Depop have made entire businesses out of it. Others have embraced, such as Farfetch, which reckons the luxury resale market is worth more than $24bn and growing f our times as fast as primary sales. Second-hand goods appeal to bargain seekers and eco-warriors alike. Making a new pair of jeans and T-shirt can use up to 20,000 litres of water, according to UK NGO Waterwise, enough to grow 70kg of potatoes.
From Financial Times (a UK publication)*
 

Sounds really awful, doesn't it? And, amazingly, it has gone on as long as it has. Clothing manufacturing and production have always had this checkered past, but that doesn't mean this is the future.

 

With the refusal of closed or closing stores to accept the clothing shipments, these manufacturers were forced to close. This caused a whole industry to collapse as these manufacturers had no means of recourse for the payment of the goods they had made. The low-cost production did not include safety nets like legal-recourse contracts or sustainable wages to their employees. Thus they had no alternative than to quit and close their manufacturing business.

 

Today, there is very little replacement or a come-back scenario for these manufacturers. The process has become so toxic that to rebuild this fast-cheap fashion process again would be hugely unprofitable and enormously unpopular. This creates a massive void in the clothing retail industry. With major high-end stores closed or in bankruptcy, no one is safe. 

 

From My Point of View

What this form of manufacturing does is devalue sewing. Sewing is a life skill, much the same as fixing things, cooking, housekeeping, and budgeting. These skills aren't so much glamorous as they are required. Yeah, we can all say that we're not really good at them, but we are at least adequately good enough to keep our lives in order so that we can eat, clothe and live in a moderately safe environment. 

 

The under-valuing of sewing as a life skill has been replaced at such an under-valued level, that it has led to other unforeseen consequences. The consumer has ended up being duped and lied to. This has continued for so many decades that a return to more rational pricing and selling parameters will shock the consumer. In many ways, the consumer is already feeling that shock. But for me, more than the economic impact is the educational skill set that can and will again value sewing as the knowledge which will be required, sought after, and used in the future. 

 

Even if a person doesn't plan on sewing one stitch after learning this life skill, at least that person becomes a far better consumer of clothing that requires the retailer to provide a better-made garment, and more sustainable.

 

And sustainable here is a word that has a double entendre. There is the unsustainable definition in that it's terrible for the planet, is an incredibly wasteful process, and promotes slave labor. But just as important, it is unsustainable from a practical sense. A process or thing that doesn't have a realistic and plausible means of support will eventually fail. That goes for everything, as anyone who has ever built a house of cards knows. Ultimately, that house of cards will fall. It can not sustain the weight of one more card resulting in the whole structure toppling down. 

 

This is the part of unsustainable that has always bothered me the most. It's like watching one more card go on that house of cards, and cringing waiting for the whole system to fail. This RTW manufacturing model has always been unsustainable, both from a humane point of view and from a logistical and pragmatic point of view. Watching the dissolution of this business practice was bound to happen. I certainly don't have any super-human prescient abilities. It was an inevitable result of an unsustainable structure. It was simply built on very shaky grounds and was bound to tumble.

 

The problem had always been that the business model was so lucrative that any designer, manufacturer, or group that wanted to try something new was considered folly. This "dreamers'" business model was perceived as stupid, impractical with no idea of pragmatic costs and profit margins. Not only were these "dreamers" not given a hearing or legitimacy, but they were also routinely and summarily rejected as being utterly oblivious to the "reality" of doing business - after all, they were only artists!

 

Finally, that is now changing.

 

Enter the sewing machine and sewing skills. This article lays out the upswing in sewing machine sales and in sewing classes. With people staying at home, needing masks and clothes, suddenly there's a desire to learn to sew or want to make your garment different, or up-grade or up-fit or re-make a garment. 

 

Suddenly sewing is a desired skill, and the sewing machine is a desired mechanism around the house. Sewing is actually a skill that others want to learn...and heaven forbid....a skill that people want to have.

 

 What happens with this sort of attitude? Primarily, there's a new understanding and value in clothing. When you have to simply refit or upgrade, you learn that sewing is not fast nor straightforward, and this forces people to completely rethink the value of their clothing and its manufacturing. 

 

To get a real grip on this, we all know about Alabama Chanin and her classes. They are both expensive. A 3-day workshop is about $1,500.

 
This puts a much more practical and realistic value on sewing.
 
This is the kind of thing that is happening now. The death of this impractical manufacturing of clothing causes consumers to consider alternatives. If one or two manufacturing facilities disappeared in the past, there was always another to take its place. With the closure and failure of so many retail stores, the majority of these factories are gone.
 
And here's the next thing - when things do open back up and they will, who is actually going to fund this sort of slave labor again. The outcry to fund these businesses will be deafening. Who wants to start this again. Most graduates from design schools teach sustainability, and these students are all dying to try their new ways of manufacturing sustainably. They want to develop and perfect that system of paying a living wage type of clothing production.
 
And as sewists, we want them to. This does everything to enhance and further and value our skills in sewing.
 
The day is coming when sewing will once again be a treasured and desired skill, and maybe not everyone will sew, but they will know enough about it to be smart about their clothing purchases.  The expectation of a cheap garment will be a thing of the past.  The consumer has long desired a more durable and longer-lasting product.  With the death of this horrible clothing manufacturing method, the consumer will be presented with this product.  This product, however, will come at a higher price.  Hopefully what the consumer will learn with time, is that even though there is a higher price, this is

Fabric stores stop closing, and some even startup. Sewing shops become creative centers full of all sorts of activity.   This does nothing but enhance our sewing skills, resources, and stature as sewists.
 
Enjoy it cause it's coming!!!
 
*Note: both of these publications are by subscription only and often these publications will offer an article for free, but once you use that up, then that "free" preview is gone for another month. What I did was quote the salient parts of these articles, but the Wall Street Journal is available usually through libraries (my local library even has it online as long as you have a library card). Check your local library to read the full articles.  


 

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July's August's Feature Resource
Well, sometimes I outsmart myself, and a very kind subscriber pointed out that there was no link to the Core Patterns, so I'm going to keep this up for another month, with the special price, for those of you who tried to click something that wasn't there!

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Core Patterns are a great way to get to simplifying not only your sewing but also the selection process that you go through in selecting projects. 

I personally keep a list of visual ideas on Pinterest (which is so perfect for this) so that when I'm perusing the net, I simply add photos or pictures to my Pinterest page, and make a little note like "Neckline," "Lapel," "Scarf," and on like that to draw my attention to that part that I like.  Sometimes it's color or color combinations, sometimes it's a simple way that a collar rolls.   Sometimes it's the whole dang thing. 

Then when I get those, "I need a new red top," or "I don't have a good red top to go with all the red bottoms I have," or any other harebrained idea, I can simply check out my Pinterest page of ideas and boom I'm off and running.

Then there's finding the pattern, or even worse having to draft the whole thing up from scratch.  But lately I've been turning more and more to my core patterns and with a little manipulation of those patterns, I have a pattern that fits, that's flattering, that's comfy and that is fairly time-efficient to make up. 
  Now how do you pick out a core pattern?  What makes a good core pattern?  What are some ideas for variations?  How do you avoid pitfalls in fabric selections for blocks or different sections on a core pattern? 

And this resource also includes another bonus - how to better choose fabrics for your patterns and how to better purchase online fabrics that will work with your projects.    


As usual this resource is 15% for the month of August - click here to see more.. 
 

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