Words such as “handmade”, “handcrafted” and “craft” appear so often in fashion marketing, in so many contexts, that they have lost their clear linguistic meaning. These terms are meant to indicate that a garment is somehow special and more valuable than if it did not have these labels. Crafts such as hand-knitting, weaving and crochet have seen a resurgence in popularity in designer show collections, with Ulla Johnson, Isabel Marant, Tommy Hilfiger and others demonstrating hand-crafted techniques in recent seasons.
When it comes to clothing, what does handmade really mean? The alternative is machine-made, which is the typical mass production model for ready-to-wear, in which clothes are made on an assembly line with little human intervention. The process is automated and completely reproducible. “Handmade” means that at least some of the garments are made by hand in the old-fashioned way. This may mean hand-sewing collars, embroidered sleeves or decorative cuffs, or it may mean that a person uses a sewing machine to make the garment, rather than a fast-fashion assembly line process.
Modern clothing that is described as handmade is usually at least partially made by machine (even if that’s just a sewing machine). With the exception of historic garments or your grandmother’s knitting hoop, it’s hard to find clothing that was made entirely by hand. The distinction between handmade and machine-made is becoming increasingly blurred and disappearing, just as the distinction between high fashion and ready-to-wear has become increasingly blurred since the 1960s. Most high-quality garments involve machines and real people, and each technique has advantages and disadvantages, depending on the application.
A renaissance in craftsmanship
When assembly-line produced standard size ready-to-wear clothes became popular, handmade clothes were considered outdated and unfashionable. They were associated with cheap, homemade clothing, while machine-made garments were edgy and associated with designers. But as machine-made, ready-to-wear garments became the norm, handmade garments gained the special, exclusive status associated with top designers and bespoke fashion. Fashion has increased production to astronomical levels, and that sense of value has changed forever. Handmade now has a greater sense of intrinsic value because it often has superior construction, detail, sustainability and human connection.
