thrifted pants with poo stain

‘Being a seamstress is a dying craft.’

I can count on one hand how many apps on my phone I go through within a single minute of boredom at work. Right now, I’m obsessed with watching fashion and sewing creators make wearable art within seconds in microblogging content. It’s fun until it isn’t, because it’s also doing a number on my own creative ability and self esteem.

I head on over to Threads, Instagram’s cousin that was an attempt to take over Twitter and is inhabited by pretty much everybody who isn’t on the latter. Between posts of content creators complaining they aren’t transparent enough on their earnings and handmade creators discussing how nobody wants to pay for quality anymore, I see a post that goes along the lines of:

‘Being a seamstress is a dying art. There are less and less local artisans with the ability to create items by hand.’

This comment was in response to a post about buying less fast fashion in a specific size, and tailoring already owned clothing to your individual size by local artisans. But it was met with more comments, most of which complained a local alteration would cost $30 to hem a single pair of pants.

Now this is the part where I go a bit crazy.

For starters, I don’t think there are enough hours in a day for me to articulate my response in a concise and clear manner. But I will make an attempt.

I wanted to say that the person hemming your pants is a human being, not a service, and has perfected a skill enough to advertise to people like you who were in need of it. I want to say that the ability to unpick a seam, study what technique was used, determine a better or identical hemming method, purchase a similar colour of thread and then finish both legs of pants is a skill deserving of an hour of that person’s time. That they are using a machine that a regular person cannot figure out within minutes and comes with a myriad of its own issues and quirks.

Most likely, the said pair of pants were constructed by a low quality weave of fabric and put together by a women in a South Asian country (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, to name a few) paid a few cents per week by a large corporation for a questionable profit margin.

I also wanted to say that the language of fabrics – to look and feel a texture and immediately know what settings of an overlocker and sewing machine are required – is acquired knowledge over decades. It’s an accumulation of practical experience that executes that ‘professional’ finish that the regular eye is blind to. And then I think about the other side of this double edged sword and I get even more confused.

In the midst of the current financial and housing crisis, with every news outlet covering the billions thrown into genocide and weaponry, sometimes that $30 is for sustenance in grocery, to pay rent and to make ends meet. Nobody should be taking money out of their savings to get a pair of pants hemmed.

Is the seamstress dead, or should we grieve financial leisure and being able to hem a basic pair of freaking pants instead?

A once staple act of service since early civilisation, being a tailor is no longer the respect it once had. I can design and sell a dress for $450, which covers fabric, notions and stitching time, or my client can purchase it from ASOS for less than $50, in all its polyester glory and free shipping. You can guess which option is more popular, and which one will end up in textile landfill.

The seamstress seems to live in Schrodinger’s box.

A friend of mine asked for help on her Instagram story for a local custom gown maker. I scoured all my local Facebook groups, contacted many artisans and got quotes. The only issue is I had to really search for these, because it’s just not easy. The local tailor is extinct for the average person to contact. There is no way to google local tailor in my area without hundreds of marketing sites advertising factory-made polyester trash.

People say the art itself is dying, but what’s really dying is our mindset that is allergic to wearing an existing wardrobe because we’ve already posted in it on Instagram, and how on earth will we go about our daily life if our friends from high school think we only own one two pairs of winter coats?

On another note, Taylor Swift posted a split second clip of her sewing strips of lace onto floral fabric the other day using a sewing machine. It sparked an outcry in the sewing world with people complaining now there will be even less fabric availability because of all the Swifties trying to emulate Taylor in her sewing girly era.