Burda Style For people who sew

Picture the texture of the braided hair of black women; the silhouettes of African mothers who have wrapped their children into blankets to carry them on their back; the urban reality of daily improvisation in the ghettos in Cape Town and “Joíburg”; and the manifold themes of self-expression of South Africa’s youth black and white – in their search for a new identity, after their liberation from the apartheid regime. All this lived experience shines through the designs of the eight South African fashion designers that were nominated for the Mercedes-Benz Award for South African Art and Culture 2009

As diverse as South Africa’s society, are the origins and the designs of the eight nominees: iconic street ware, romantic opulence, Afro-bohemia, urban warriors and reshaped traditions that lie somewhere between history and future.

Of course there can only be one winner, Black Coffee,

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Columbia – that is for me Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, rainforest, Guerrilla war and Ingrid Betancourt, and my friends Tatiana and Javier who I met in random places at random times. When I think of Colombia, I think of many things but normally not of fashion. Nevertheless, it is here in Colombia that one of the most important FashionFairs of Latin America takes place: the Colombiamoda a mega-event in Medellin, that celebrated its 20th anniversary this year.

And this year, just as in the years before 22 selected young designers “jÛvenes creadoresî” all of them still students, had a chance to present their creations on the catwalk. Inspired by the theme “Raizes” (Roots), they presented 22 unique mini-collections that search for their ethnic, social, historic and cultural roots. Especially in these times of crisis they consider their ethnic heritage as an oasis of sustainability and self-sufficiency that provide guidance towards designing aesthetically novel and beautiful clothes that are still within the reach of the consumer. So, it is no wonder that the students of the Andean University of Pereira turn to traditional materials such as the fibers of the fique. Before the Spanish conquest the inhabitants of Colombia used

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In Germany there is a saying that only in months without an R in it, (May-August) is it warm enough to walk around barefooted. But some people do not have a choice to wear shoes, irrespective of the name of the months or the temperature of the day. Yet, as commonly known, necessity is the mother of invention. In Germany many years ago, boys who were herding cattle in the rural areas warmed their bare feet standing in fresh cow droppings during cold mornings. In other parts of the world, people have been more practical, crafting sandals out of old car tires.

In principle, all you need is a piece of old tire (as big as your foot) which can be found even in remote rural areas in Africa and a few pieces of material to tie this tire-sole onto your foot. Leather will do, or some fabric, or simply string. The number of variations and uses are almost unimaginable: or could you imagine running a marathon in tire sandals?

While probably most of us can’t imagine running a marathon even in normal running shoes, in 2008, six Maasai men came from Northern Tanzania to run the London Marathon to raise money to provide their village with clean water. They ran in their full traditional Maasai dress, including spears and tire sandals. They may not have won but they easily raised enough money to finance the much needed infrastructure.

Lots of tourists traveling to Africa are fascinated by those sandals. A couple from Britain was so intrigued that they even opened an online store, Jambo Jambo, that sells tire sandals in various designs, made by men and women who live in Kibera the biggest slum in Sub-Saharan Africa. If you watch the film the Constant Gardener you get a bit of a romanticized idea of Kibera (it was actually partly filmed there).

But you don’t find tire sandals just in Africa. You will find them in Latin America, Asia and at least some decades ago, you would even find them in the US (check out the comments).

Curious? If you want to make your own tire sandals, maybe you can use schickchick’s flip flop creation as pattern.

Photo © Binh Giang

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Today we find ourselves in Savile Row, located in the heart of London, the “golden mile of tailoring”. We enter a little shop through a glass door, a bell rings and Mr S. turns his head to greet us “Good afternoon, Miss. How can I help?”

We are not here to get a suit we are here to learn all about bespoke tailoring and the great tradition of Savile Row. Mr S. is far too passionate about his trade to be disappointed that we want to talk rather than to buy. "…. well, my love, to understand the history of Savile Row and our trade, let me first clarify once and for all, the meaning of bespoke.

Bespoke tailoring is the equivalent to the ladies’ haute couture. We do not use standardized patterns. Oh no, that would be made-to-measure tailoring- we take the individual measures of each and every customer and fit our handmade suits to their very own shape."

“And the word bespoke?”

“Jolly good question, my dear. The word bespoke comes from bespeak, which in turn means “to speak for something”; and that means nothing else than “to give order for something to be made”. So, the word although a bit old-fashioned is still spot-on: we tailor what our customers ask for."

“But is this type of tailoring industry not in danger with all the cheap mass production”

“Oh my dear, yes, indeed times have changed and for the bespoke trade it is definitely not getting easier. Our little Savile Row is like a haven of craftsmanship in this fast-paced city where everything that is produced lasts just for a fleeting moment. Our skills may be considered archaic by some, but there are still enough men who appreciate a perfectly fitted suit: the royal family, statesmen, business leaders, actors and singers…. Of course I cannot give you any names to respect the privacy of my customers.

You should note, it is not the suit alone, it is also the quality of our services we offer that makes us unique: we provide expert cloth consultants; offer a choice of at least 2,000 fabrics; keep a customer’s details on record and provide after-care for the suits customers buy. And all that we attempt to protect through the Savile Row Bespoke Association that we founded in 2004."

And while I’m off to chat with the guys from the Savile Row Bespoke Association I recommend you to check out all the great men’s patterns on BurdaStyle, my favorites are Ehren and the Stinchcomb although you might want to try something lighter for the hot summer months.

photo © Kempt

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In the middle-ages probably no tailor was as lucky as the fairy-tale tailor who ended up marrying the king’s daughter. In fact, in France, centre of fashion for centuries, as a tailor you were particularly unlucky. Why? Because unlike other professions French tailors lacked a guild that could have regulated their craft and protected their interests! The French Revolution (1789) when Napoleon wreaked havoc in Europe in the name of democracy, liberty and brotherhood only to crown himself Emperor a few years later finally abolished the guild system and now at least everyone was equally bad off.

In other places in Europe, the strict rules of the guilds eradicated any uncomfortable competition between tailors, strictly regulating the number of tailors in a given place and ensuring that no-one who was not an accredited tailor would think about entering the business. Each tailor had to go through a long apprenticeship and only the most skilled ones could pass the Masters examination that allowed them to design and cut the patterns and sell clothes. Journeyman, aspiring tailors who had passed their apprenticeship but not their Masters examination (yet), were confined to sew and iron clothes.

And then around the 12th century something changed: along with the cotton fabric, came the Renaissance and a new idea of clothes developed: body-shaped clothes. In fact, some like to say that was the birth of “fashion”.

But apprentices were by far not the lowest in the hierarchy: they were helped by male seamstresses, badly paid menial laborers who worked “stored away” sitting cross-legged on the sewing tables to save space in the crammed and dark workshops.

At least in Germany, endless parodies have been shaped by this image of haggard figures sitting on tables sewing feverishly, their eyes ruined from working in dark rooms hidden behind thick glasses. The story of Max and Moritz and Tailor Buck by Wilhelm Busch (German caricaturist and poet) is a definite must: here the first lines as a teaser (translated by the Rosetta Project).

Through the town and country round </p ALIGN=CENTER>

Was one Mr Buck renowned.</p ALIGN=CENTER>

Sunday coats, and week-day sackcoats,</p ALIGN=CENTER>

Bob-tails, swallow tails, and frock coats,</p ALIGN=CENTER>

Gaiters, breeches, hunting-jackets;</p ALIGN=CENTER>

Waistcoats, with commodious pockets, -</p ALIGN=CENTER>

And other things, too long to mention,</p ALIGN=CENTER>

Claimed Mr Tailor Bucks attention.</p ALIGN=CENTER>

Or, if something wanted doing,</p ALIGN=CENTER>

In the way of darning, sewing, </p ALIGN=CENTER>

Piecing, patching, -if a button </p ALIGN=CENTER>

Needed to be fixed or put on, – </p ALIGN=CENTER>

Anything of any kind,</p ALIGN=CENTER>

Anywhere before, behind, -</p ALIGN=CENTER>

Mister Buck could do the same,</p ALIGN=CENTER>

For it was his life’s great aim.</p ALIGN=CENTER>

you’ll find the rest of the story (including fantastic illustrations) here.

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Once upon a time, there was a brave little tailor … Probably many of you know at least one fairy tale involving a tailor: the brave tailor who went out to fight against flies and giants to marry the king’s daughter in the end or the emperor’s new clothes that also involves a tailor…. remember?

But how many know that well before “once upon a time” there were no tailors (at least in Europe). Before the mid-12 century, it was the responsibility of women at home or nuns in cloisters to produce whatever people wore, which at that time had nothing to do with the well fitted clothes we are wearing today. From what I’ve read they were, to put it plainly- not particular fashion wonders: wide and unshaped fastened with belts around the waist.

And then around the 12th century something changed: along with the cotton fabric, came the Renaissance and a new idea of clothes developed: body-shaped clothes. In fact, some like to say that was the birth of “fashion”.

But what does the Renaissance have to do with fashion and body-shaped clothes? In those times when daily life was strongly regulated by the Church and Christian beliefs the emergence of another style didn’t just happen. You needed a whole new outlook in life and that new outlook were the slowly emerging beliefs of the Renaissance. In the later stages of the Renaissance you can see these ideas in the introduction of 3-D perspective in painting that pulls the viewer right into a picture or the suffering faces of the Christian martyrs, are typical signs of this new European worldview that placed humans and human sentiments in short, the individual into the center of the world. And supposedly with this new consciousness of the YOU and ME came a new consciousness of the personal body and the body as form of expressing yourself.

Thus, one thing led to another and with a new demand for differently crafted clothes, and new technical possibilities (cutting out shapes) clothes making the shift from being a domestic female task to becoming a profession in itself calling for new skills: the birth of the tailor and the tailoring tradition.

I will tell you more about that tailoring tradition and why brave fairytale tailors are pictured as hungrily skinny people sitting cross-legged on tables in my next blog!

In the meantime check out the Renaissance inspired creations at BurdaStyle like almost all of Paranoir’s Renaissance Gown or the Tabard How To.

Photo © National Gallery London

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If I write about silk silk and cotton I cannot but have to tell you something about Cashmere too! When the icy winter wind whips the farthest corner of the Himalaya’s at temperatures where even looking out the window makes you catch a cold, (-40 degrees Celsius!) this sensationally soft wool will keep you warm, after all, it insulates the Himalayan mountain goat that roam the mountain ranges of China, Mongolia and India at 4,000 meters above the sea. Today we also find them in other places, like Scotland where quite a thriving Cashmere industry has developed since the 19th century.

The hair is six times finer than a human hair, so fine that it has to be woven by hand in a painstakingly laborious process (just think how difficult it is to get a thread into a needle hole). But before we get to the weaving we first have to collect the hair. For that the fine undercoat of the hopefully patient goat is combed out to extract the fine white hair also called pashm from which Cashmere is made. Even if the goat is patient, there isn’t much wool coming out or in other words, there may be plenty of wool but each goat only produces about 150 grams of pashm; no wonder that one single scarf for example requires the wool of three goats!

By the way, traditionally the word “Pashmina” (a Persian word for “finest wool fiber”) referred to pashm (the wool) once spun into yarn, while the word Cashmere was used to describe the traditional shawl. Why Cashmere? Because originally in the 15th century only Kashmiri weavers had the skills to weave the pashm into scarves that the Mughal, the then rulers of India, were so fond of. Since Napoleon’s time (he gave a Cashmere shawl to his wife Josephine and triggered a Cashmere craze in Europe) the definitions have changed, at least in Europe: Pashmina refers to the scarf and Cashmere to the fiber.

While fashion designers discovered the wonderful properties of cashmere in the 1920s, it was only in the 1990s, that the Pashmina, although having been worn by Indian aristocracy and even Napoleon’s wife long time ago, suddenly became a must-have in a woman’s wardrobe after fashion designers featured them on Western catwalks (although now of course not made from pure Cashmere but mixed with silk and other fibres).

Of course BurdaStyle members have already found their very own original uses for Pashminas and Cashmere: check out stepanka’s cashmere bolero and ParaNoire’s Cashmere and Silk Blazer.

Try making these out of cashmere:

Talea

Talea 2

Cape Dracula

Coat Elizabeth

photo from MÂnestrÂle.

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Cotton candy is magical and so was cotton for Romans and Europeans when traders first brought cotton fabrics from Asia. As old as silk (see last week’s blog) or even older, cotton had been grown, spun and woven in the Indus Valley and Egypt at least 3,000 years bc. In Mexico, first evidence of cultivated cotton dates back to eight thousand bc. Never having seen cotton grow, the “wool that grew on plants” spurred the fantasies of medieval Europeans. John Mandeville the supposed author of a book telling of travels around the world that inspired Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo (published in the late 14th century) writes: “here grew [in India] a wonderful tree which bore tiny lambs on the endes of its branches. These branches were so pliable that they bent down to allow the lambs to feed when they are hungrie.” Today, we are pretty certain that neither John Mandeville nor the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary ever existed, but for people in medieval Europe that was far from clear.

In India a whole cotton industry developed, growing, processing and trading with cotton fabrics. Yet, once the British came to colonize the country in the late 18th century, India’s cotton processing industry faltered, giving way to an absolutely absurd trading system: raw cotton was picked by Indian laborers at petty wages, shipped (in British ships) all the way to Britain on a three week journey; was turned into cloth by English laborers; and shipped back to India were the cloth was sold to Indian kings and landlords. Britain benefited of wages and profits.

Cotton trade with India was soon replaced by cotton production in the United States. Why? Trading routes were shorted and production even cheaper “thanks” to the employment of unpaid slaves. Until the 1950s when machines reliably took over the picking of cotton in the fields, cotton production remained a laborious task which whether officially called “slavery” or not went hand in hand with some sort of exploitational work in the fields, no matter whether workers were black or white.

Today cotton is anywhere either pure or mixed with other fibers: bath towels, denim, socks, underwear, t-shirts, bed sheets, yarn for crochet and knitting, fishnets, coffee filters, tents, gunpowder and in many, many of the BurdaStyle patterns and creations: the Thai Fishermen’s Pants and Light Cotton Summer Dress may be just what you are looking with Summer fast approaching.

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Sometime around 3,000 bc, a little princess, wife to the great Yellow Emperor of China, was sitting in the palace gardens under her favorite Mulberry Tree sipping tea, chatting, and laughing with her friends, when a cocoon with modest splash fell into her cup of hot tea. Seven faces gathered to cast an eye on the little floating object. Princess Xi Ling Shi carefully caught hold of the thing but just as she was about to drop it into the grass she hesitated to take another look. Moving the creature on her flat hand closer to her eyes, she discovered layers of fine threat, fragile and soft as a cobweb that enclosed whatever was inside. Endlessly slowly she started to unravel the threat into long loops across her hand. So fine it was, yet it lasted, didn’t break until she had reeled the entire cocoon, spun and weaved it into what according to Confucian legend was the first piece of silk.

Even before the Silk Roads were traveled by Chinese traders, silk garments from China reached far beyond the country’s borders, not to the happiness of everyone: as the Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger writes “I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one’s decency, can be called clothes. … (and) a husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife’s body”.

Although it was forbidden by death to smuggle silkworms or the secret of making silk beyond the borders, China gradually lost its monopoly. Yet, Chinese silk was for a long time, some of the finest and most precious thanks to Bombyx mori. This blind and flightless moth – originally unique to China – produces 500 or more minuscule eggs, one ounce of which will produce about 30,000 worms that together eat 1 ton of mulberry leaves and their cocoons produce 12 pounds of the smoothest and finest silk threat, a single one of which can reach between 600 to 900 meters. Not only that, according to Chinese sources already in 1090 they had invented a machine to help with the laborious task of unwinding the silkworms and silk spinning machines were introduced in the 13th century!

The story of silk continues for those who want to know more, the Silk Association of Great Britain has plenty of information.

The painting (12th century) shows women striking and preparing silk

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