Dressmaking for picky clients...

I just made a dress for my youngest daughter. Mainly because she begged me to make her something when we were at the fabric store and she got to pick her own fabric. I don’t usually make my kid’s stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I would like to but it usually ends up in a fight over “creative differences” (which really translates into me not letting them have micro miniskirts or low cut cleavage tops –they are 6 & 8, for goodness sake!).

In any case I agreed to make a ‘sundress’. I had a pattern I had made previously and I knew it wouldn’t be much trouble to make.

As I was making such dress, I thought of a time long ago when mothers made their children’s clothes. Nowadays it is practically something unheard of. One of the reasons is because of the lack availability of good supplies such as fabric and notions. These items have become scarce because there is an increasing decline in home sewing so the demand is not there. Also, most fabric is no longer made in North America and with most of the mills overseas needing large orders we basically get the ‘scraps’. And the bottom line is most people are not learning how to sew because they don’t NEED to. It is simply cheaper to buy it!

Here’s the ugly truth, a dress like the one I made, could possibly retail at a store such as Wal-mart or another private label store for maybe $20 more than likely $15. Here’s the breakdown of how much it should retail for if I were a designer selling to a buyer.

My cost: Fabric: $10; Thread and notions: $.50; Pattern: $.25: Labour: $15.25 (Let's say it took me an hour to complete). Total: $26. Now, that’s just my cost. If I want to make some sort of a living I have to sell it at wholesale to cover some of my overhead and expenses. So the traditional mark up from cost to wholesale has been 100%, this would make the wholesale price of the dress $52.00. If that dress was going to a children’s boutique then the retailer would have to make his profit and charge typically double again at $104.00. Now, granted this is one dress which makes it more like a custom piece, and if you start making more than one your labour cost improves.

                                      

In her book “Overdressed”, author Elizabeth Cline talks about the decline of the garment industry in the United States (a story that’s not much different from the one in Canada). She interviewed several manufacturers who explained how the main cost of manufacturing clothing is the labour, therefore it is practically impossible for a domestic factory to compete with labour costs across the world. Cline mentions that in the U.S., sewing machine operators make typically minimum wage which is $9.00 or $1660 monthly. In parts of China wages for the same position would be $147 a month, and in Bangladesh where wages recently went up it would be $43 a month.  

I just rented a bike rack for my minivan, and I figured it would be a good idea to have it installed so it was correct. The cost of labour for the 10 minutes it took to put the hooks around my trunk was $15.00. I never even flinched or thought of bargaining for a better price. So, why is it unreasonable to pay a skilled machinist who can whip up a welt pocket in 10 minutes at least minimum wage?

Domestic manufacture in Canada is practically a minority. In the US it has gone from 50% in 1950 to 2% in 2004, according to Cline. I shiver at the thought of what would happen if suddenly these countries decided they did not want to take our orders, what if they decided they had better offers elsewhere and stopped producing. What would we do without cheap fashion? Could we go a few weeks without shopping? How about a few months? Where would everyone learn to sew in a jiffy?

And yet this is all too abstract for many of us to worry about. We just care that the cost of the garment is low so we can get more bang for our buck. But are we really getting more? Or have we all been duped into believing that we have the upper hand? Do we really believe that the massive amounts of jobs lost in the manufacturing sector have all been replaced by other types of jobs in the fashion industry?  

In the end I understand that things come down to dollars and cents. For a consumer on a budget it can seem black and white. However, I believe that there’s more to this story and this is what we’ll unfold. How can we be supportive of local economy and build it up thus creating more jobs while still getting a ‘bargain’? Well, I think it all depends on what we consider a ‘bargain’. And so this is what I’ll continue to discern.

In the meantime, I enjoyed making the dress for my daughter…even if after all that, she decided that while she loved it, it was much too itchy for her to wear…darn cheap fabric!