The myth hunter #1: All Clothes Are Machine-Made
Technically, most clothes are machine-made, but they wouldn’t be without the help of humans
Have you ever wondered why brands use the word ‘handmade’ as a marketing tool? “Handmade with love!” “Made by hand just for you!” “Handcrafted by a young designer!” Sounds great. Except, it’s hardly ever true since most brands at least use sewing machines. People seem to associate ‘handmade’ with small quantities and ‘machine-made’ with mass production - as if armies of bots are sewing their Zara T-shirts in Bangladesh. There are no bots. Yet. They’re people.
I want to take you through the whole production process. Firstly, everything starts in a field, whether growing cotton for T-shirts or extracting oil for polyester garments. That is a complex step packed with sustainability issues we’re not tackling today. The problem we are dealing with today starts once the fibers are picked, processed, and turned into fabrics. In large-scale industrial production, machines cut the textile into a pattern. This process still requires a human to oversee and adjust the cloth if needed. Small brand designers (or the tailors they outsource) usually do this by hand. Some design the patterns using their computer, and some do the whole thing by hand. After the pattern is designed and cut, it’s time for sewing. In big factories, different workers usually work on separate parts of a garment. For example, the first person has to stitch all the collars together, the second one sews all the pockets, and the third finishes all the hems. At small brands, tailors or designers themselves usually sew the whole garment. And no, they don’t take a needle and a thread and sew it by hand. They do it with the help of the sewing machine.
Sewing machines have been around for over 250 years. For most of the 20th century, anyone who could afford it had one at home. Magazines were selling cutting patterns so every woman could make a dress at home. Due to this, handmade clothing became even more valuable, and most haute couture houses wouldn’t even think about replacing some of their handwork with machines. Andrew Bolton, head curator of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, told Harper’s Bazaar in 2016, “the traditional distinction between haute couture and ready-to-wear is the distinction between handmade and machine-made.” The article ran the day after the opening of the Manus x Machina exhibition. The exhibition questioned this traditional distinction between haute couture and pret-á-porter now that everything, including couture, is machine-made. In fact, all the couture pieces displayed were machine-made. Only the surface details, such as flowers or feathers, are hand sewn onto the machine-made garment. Even embroidery can be machine-made today, but most couture houses still make it by hand.
The fact the exhibits were machine-made doesn’t make them less haute couture, nor does it make a high-street brand with production in India more haute couture. The difference is in the idea behind the clothes, the fabric, the details added, the tailor’s skills, and many other fragments that make a couture piece. Besides, machines have allowed us to go forward. Designers came up with extraordinarily creative solutions thanks to them. Think Iris Van Herpen or Issey Miyake. They’ve allowed us to achieve more with our clothes, to make them better and longer-lasting. In the end, all of this makes completely handmade garments so much more rare, beautiful, and admirable - definitely not a mere marketing tool.