A Place for Tailors
From tribe to farm, trader, village, city, region, and now the world, I'm learning that bespoke tailoring is alive, but is it well? Just a rhetorical question.
I watched Reza's conversation with Claudia Chan last night. They both made great points, and even though I'm not a tailor, it got me thinking. Globalization and industrialization has been the life and death of a lot of businesses, but tradesmen, craftsmen, and artisans survive. What I came away with was a better understanding of where the Tailor fits into the apparel business, whether it's bespoke or mass produced.
A bespoke customer has a particular look in mind or a designer comes up with an idea for a garment they want mass produced, but it's the tailor who figures out how to achieve the finished product. Chen talked about using pattern making software that helps her work out the patterns that will be sent to manufacturing facilities all around the world to be produced. That said, growing populations will drive increased production volumes, but it seems to me that tailors will always always be a critical part of the process.
Tailors -- Fabric Engineers 🤔
Agreed, the trick, I think, is to know where the on/off switch is on the particular attack-robot they send to collect me for human testing. 😮🤣 Seriously though...
I have a lot of time to think, and whenever I learn about a job or trade or profession, I wonder what a parent's reaction would be if a child said they wanted to be one. Obviously, the extremes would be a doctor or a ventriloquist, but everything else falls somewhere in between. As a rural American, if I had said I wanted to be a tailor when I graduated, the image they would have would be the guy who pops out next to the changing rooms at Sears or JC Penney's with a tape measure and pin cushion. It's a job, a skill, and a trade, but as a parent, the notion of a child pursuing it has to make you stop and think. I'm by no means suggesting there's anything wrong with it; I'm not. What I am saying is that the future of that career path is greatly impacted by new technologies (LASER imaged 3D fittings/ordering/cutting], cheap mass production, and the growing business/social acceptance of dressing like a slob.
What's really interesting and telling to me, society wise, is that the traditional tailoring books up to the mid twentieth century focus on making clothes for "gentlemen." Don't see too many of those around, at least in the States, so figuring out what the future holds for the tailoring trade seems like a big deal.
Just saying.