The Changing Face of Clothing Construction
Everybody’s an Expert Now- and Why That’s Bad For the Craft
I was sitting with my former fashion/sewing instructor, Tchad Elliott, the other day and we got to talking about the documentary “Men of the Cloth.” No, it’s not about religious folk; it’s a piece on the dying art of traditional Italian tailoring.
The documentary chronicles the art of bespoke men’s suit making through the eyes of a few master Italian tailors still working in the trade. Watching it was like being let in on a secret bygone era for which my heart aches. I live in the city so that kind of shop is a rare bird for me; places where you are greeted by name as you step in the front door…small, storefront establishments that take up little square footage but stay in the same location for eons and whose owners pass their extensive knowledge down from generation to generation.
Some of these men in their 60s (and older) started at the cutting table as young as twelve years old. They apprenticed. They learned to fashion a man’s suit from the ground up.
This brought out a number of musings between Tchad and myself.
I asked him about the changing face of construction technique and he brought up an interesting point about sewing and history:
Tchad: I think that the biggest thing for me is the difference in expectations about what this or that technique should look like from a technical perspective. In our lives, we’ve pretty much only seen machine stitching in the world around us and especially now factory finishes rather than hand tailored or couture proper, so our eyes are going to see that cold regimented sewing as “right” in some way. I’m talking about newer sewists for the most part of course; there will always be historians and academics who know what things *used* to look like or how they *were* done, but they are few and far between. Most people survey their environment and make judgments about things. Seeing sewing out about in the wild is no different.
I’m a bit of a hybrid, because I came of age and learned to sew when the old tailors and dressmakers who had learned by hand and saw the rise of machines were just dying out. I got to see a lot of everyday pedestrian work from the late 19th and early 20th century and inherited some of it. The differences between that world and ours with our 20th and 21st century lens is very interesting to me.
He also pointed out that one hundred years previous, the techniques you learned depended on a variance of factors. It mattered what type of textile a person had available to work with and if you learned via an extant garment as an example, where was it made? German methods versus French, etc.
For me, there’s this interesting dynamic, generationally speaking. We talked about how our grandmothers all knew how to sew; they were taught from a young age in the home. Our parents were the first feminists out into the professional world. For them, home sewing took a backseat to climbing the corporate ladder. Consequently, I (and others of my generation) did not learn to sew as kids.
Of course, this is all relative depending on from which generation you hail.
Just a few years prior to my high school days students (mainly girls) were still learning rudimentary bits of sewing in Home Economics classes.
Now? Home sewing is seeing a massive renaissance. Even amidst a pandemic, Tchad says his teaching days are full up. With social distancing in the studio and half the time spent disinfecting surfaces, but full up all the same.
With the preponderance of YouTubers out there and a plethora of How-To videos, it seems that anyone can show anyone else how to sew. I’m not convinced that this is a good thing.
Tchad: So, yes. I like to tell people that if we couldn’t show each other how to do new things we’d still be hitting each other over the heads with rocks and never going out onto the savannah. I think there is this very human thing that happens with tool use and the techniques around them. I’m not a magical person, but the act of teaching someone to do something comes very close.
I think the thing that strikes me about YouTube and has kept me away from it as a teacher is that the teaching of this or that technique takes a back seat to the personality of the person doing the teaching. This I do not love, but it definitely reinforces my favorite author Quentin Crisp’s opinion that teaching is much less a way to show someone how to do geometry or in our case, sewing, but is instead a vehicle for bringing the teacher’s personality into the world and laying it bare. I think this is fine and good, but there is a slight disconnect in what I see as “good teaching” and how that can easily be confused and conflated with “I like watching this.”
I was all over this statement. My chief complaint about the plethora of YouTubers is that nowadays a person’s expertise is often measured by how many hits their YouTube channel has, which is a false indicator. That just reflects popularity, not necessarily being a longtime practitioner of the trade.
The question of traditional master tailors and the like dying out led us to a deep discussion of the how and whys. Just go to any department store and pick up a piece of clothing- any piece- and really examine its construction quality. I typically tell anyone who will listen that once you learn how to sew you’ll rarely want a ready-made piece from a store again.
So, how can a field like bespoke suit tailoring with such a longstanding recognized quality lose out to what’s sold in stores, with items that are so poorly made by comparison? Is it purely financial?
Tchad was brutally honest in his take.
Tchad: Three words: Slavery, Consumerism, and Internationalism.
The international system we are in does not facilitate or support that kind of work anymore on the same scale it once did; people have to make very active choices to seek that work out. The trade as it was is still there to be had. There are still customers, but too many consumers think of the act of consuming and not of being in a sartorial relationship with a creator. We get cheap clothes from people who are slaves in all but name, and then look at the dollar sign to our own wallets rather than factoring in our relationship to the person doing the creating. This was not always the case.
I feel dubious about the solution.
Can we really tamp down fast fashion? We all partake in it to a certain extent. But the toll it takes on the environment, the push toward mass consumerism, a new fashion “season” every few weeks, not to mention promoting underpaid sweatshop workers….is there any reining in the beast?
Tchad: Yes, collapse of the entire system on an international level. I’m being glib, but only slightly. Until we consume less and think more (or at all) about our
relationship to creators throughout the chain, it will be with us.
Tchad’s classes on the north side of Chicago are a sewer’s dream. No more than six people per session (maybe less right now) so for three hours each week that’s a lot of individual assistance with your projects- which, by the way, are completely up to you to decide on. Have a hankering to build up your summer wardrobe? Just need to make a pair of spectacular living room drapes? Or maybe you are getting married in twelve weeks and um, well, you’d like to make your own wedding gown (this really happened)?
You are free to bring the projects of your choice to the studio. I have gone two rounds of semesters with Tchad and can’t imagine a more talented, patient, and knowledgeable teacher.
Before we went our separate Zoom ways, I asked him about his philosophy on “old school” construction techniques versus more modernized applications, since his courses are such an open forum.
Tchad: I don’t have a set theory sense or curriculum about sewing. I think that a broad range of skills without a ton of academic dogma works best for me and the people who’ve sought me out over the past 25 years generally and 20 years of teaching sewing classes in Chicago. I mean, as a high level academic in fields not related to sewing I am *always* going to be inclined to that approach, but it isn’t entirely practical for learning and executing creative projects.
I’d say that I try to give people a broad range of input — so this hem may have been done like *this* in 1880 by hand, but in the 20s it would have been done like *this* or *this*. The “sewing teacher answer is *this* but *this* is what you are going to be inclined to do when it is 3 o’clock in the morning and you just need to WEAR THE DRESS TO THE WEDDING AT NOON. That is a broad range that generates ideas and lets people know there are options with totally legitimate reasons backing them up.
One of the best definitions of glamour that I have ever come across is something along the lines of — Glamour exists when that which has not been entirely promised is not entirely delivered. We live in a glamorous world *in this sense* and rarely any other.
If you live in the Chicagoland region and would like to sign up to create some glamour for yourself (bespoke suit, cocktail dress, or a vintage pair of hot pants in satin lavender) check out the website link below and give Tchad Elliott a shout.
“Men of the Cloth” is currently available for viewing on Amazon Prime.
Yours truly,
Vivie Valentina M.
