Patchwork and Putting Pieces Together
In Fashion, In Art, and In Broken Systems
Patchwork in fashion is telling a story of sustainability, the strongest demand in fashion today. The young have rebelled since the 1960s to change what they see as bad in the world today. “The Ripped Jeans trend emerged in the seventies, signifying rebellion. Early punks tore apart consumer goods as an expression of their anger towards society,” says Daily Mail Online.
Rhonda Garelick, On Fashion, New York Times, December 27, 2020, says: “This has been the worst year in fashion industry history. But neither the industry nor fashion will disappear. Instead, they will transform.” We must be very aware and careful about what and how transformations. We need affordability and quality as well as sustainability.
Industrialization: the Good and the Bad
Dana Thomas, Fashionopolis 2019, is right about the present industry: “Fashion is a dirty business: Human rights abuses, environmental devastation and economic devastation — broad strokes of a deeply broken system.”, read Esquire. The Times (UK) says, “She makes clear from the first moments of industrialization it has played fast and loose with its workers and the environment.” Science says, “She takes us through the dark industry of the clothing industry.”
Her evaluations are disturbing, because I know garment industry history better than Dana Thomas — from my experience within it since the 1940s, starting as a garment stitcher in factories at age16. I loved fast production, made money in piecework, and developed excellent skills for leading and teaching in my own corporation from the 1960s to 1980s. I designed and manufactured high quality and creative fashion clothing that hung with top designers in top retail stores. My garments were less expensive because of my excellent fast production ideas that maintained high quality, and my stitchers loved making them.
Unfortunately, this great knowledge is lost because it’s no longer taught in any schools or colleges. Those of us, who know quality fast production, learned it by experience in the industry. There are a few of us left. What is left are couture designers who design and show for sensationalism and advertising, and sell at ridiculously high prices that only the wealthy can afford, because their production is so slow — often taking about 800 hours for one garment. The other side that is left is the cheap garments that end up in the rubbish as shown on the Fashionopolis book cover.
Dana Thomas is right about the present industry, since the 1980s. The cause of this disaster is that there are no longer any CEOs or production managers that know quality fast production. Today they just go after low-costs and high profits and making zillions of cheap clothing. We cannot go back to the better past — although we can learn from it. We must take where we are and build new and better ways. Dana Thomas is wrong about a future of convincing consumers to buy better goods when that quality clothing has skyrocketed beyond any affordability for the middle class, let alone the poor class. We must stop teaching them that the middle and poor classes are only worth junk!
Some Ideas from Consumers in the New York Times
1. Thrift stores offer re-wearing and affordability, but are overloaded and therefore not much sustainability.
2. Some retailers are offering buy-backs for transformations into new garments — often called upcycling. It takes great technical knowledge for good, wearable transformations, which knowledge is very missing today. Education could help here if they put their minds to it. It would be a great idea for young designers to start small businesses and satisfy needs instead of just themselves.
3. Excess materials and scraps from the industry made into fashion accessories. This idea is good in a small way, but let’s design more ideas for wider use of so many scraps. Of course, I’m thinking Patchwork here.
4. A few consumers wrote about altering their old clothes for continued wear. Good idea, but how many consumers know how to do that today? Only the wealthy can afford a tailor. It could be a great idea for education, and for young designers to start small businesses. Very few have even a little success today.
Patchwork and History
Patchwork has been around for a very long time as a functional process. I was born during the Great Depression, 1933, and saw a great deal being done in patching up old clothes. What excited me, as an adolescent, was what my Aunt Myrtle did with old socks with holes. She made cloth dolls, found buttons, sequins and other objects, or embroidered their faces, made yarn for hair, stuffed them with scraps for a body, and made clothes from scraps of fabric. She sold them at gift shows and a gift store she owned. It inspired me to design and make the doll’s clothes, and my aunt sold them in her store and shows. It was my first business at age 14 and inspired me to go on to great future businesses.
1.Creative Kits 1965, a catalogue I designed with suede pieces crocheted together. 2. Collection for Swift Textiles 1970, pieces leftover from pants stitched onto top. 3. Willett Collection, 1972, leather pieces on the knit dress. 4. Willett Collection, 1975, Suede landscape skirt using suede pieces. 5. Willett Collection 1995, leather vest with suede leaves from pieces, worn by me at MassArt in 2006.
Let’s Make Patchwork Fun, Aesthetic, and Functional
The neckline of my friend’s loved shirt was frayed at the edge and was ripped from the collar in 3 spots. I had fun designing this functional patch. 2. Polka dot patches to cover stains on a jacket 3. Her pants were too small, so I put a contrasting stripe to make them a little bigger. Do too much and they would get distorted. It is so easy to take in something too big, but it takes design innovation to make something bigger.
I am soon going to start a newsletter because I enjoy designing solutions to problems and helping young designers with technical problems in fashion. Please email me with your email and I will send you a coy when ready. It will be free. Shirley@pastpresentfuturebook.com
“We Got to Figure Out How to Work Together”, Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times
Friedman was talking about nations. 3.03.21 he wrote, “We may be witnessing a major realignment of the Middle East … normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. …Two ecosystems fusing together.“ It seems the cause is going from oil abundance to oil scarcity, and “attracting the talent needed for a non-oil economy”. It’s great when bad things help make good things! Will the Pandemic help make nations and people work more together?
Fixing what the Internet Broke
Shira Ovide, 3.01.21, says, “The unruly mess of how to find what you want to stream online … because companies care more about their bottom line than their customers, so as streaming services scatter entertainment around like confetti, it’s almost impossible to figure out how they work together. Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google … thousands of options that constantly change and vary by country … some return unreliable junk.” In another article, she says, “Internet companies should tell us what they’re doing and why.”
We would love for them all to work together, but how many people work together with each other or with businesses? Friedman is right to say that we must figure out how to work together.
The fashion apparel industry is an illustration of not working together and failing from being ruled by money and competition and too much glamour of celebrities instead of consumers. No companies work together today, as some did in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. There weren’t so many big ones that ruled the industry, only lots of small companies. I remember going to work in the New York design rooms, as a sample maker in the 1950s, and discovering that pattern design engineers would exchange some good working patterns with pattern design engineers in other firms.
Today, they have non-disclosure agreements to not do so. I had to sign one at DuPont in the 1980s for both sides talking about our ideas. I researched for my National Science Foundation grant awards in the 1990s, which was based on a set of foundation patterns, common to all, that would make the industry faster, higher quality and ever so much better for consumers and fitting. I learned the Dept. of Defense and Sears & Roebuck had worked for 20 years to get a universal set of patterns. No, go — every company said, “Use mine, we will not use anyone else’s” The US industry, which was once glorious has faded, and what’s left is zillions of cheap junk, poor fitting, or slow, dressmaker quality from the 19th century that is way too expensive.
There are many people trying to “put pieces together”. Remember that we cannot go back to the way things were. We must create new ways and things, as Angelique Conner Pattie did in what she called a “Patchwork from the Ocean”.
I would love to hear from others and my readers if they have ideas about putting pieces together, in things or systems, like economics, business, art, fashion, etc. Shirley@pastpresentfuturebook.com
Thank you for reading.
