Week 4: Response to Hethorn – Hope Myers

Although I felt like this article was more geared to designers I thought she still made some interesting points. One question she asked, what piece clothing is your favorite and why, made m think. One of my favorite pieces of clothing that I own is a dress that I got tailor made in Vietnam. Because I was able to choose the fabric, pattern, and pretty much every aspect of the dress and it fits me perfectly I am much happier with it than other things I buy, like random clothes from taobao that I don’t actually end up liking. The only reason I was able to do this though was because labor is so cheap in Vietnam that it still only cost $20 to get the dress made, which is actually cheaper than buying one from stores like forever 21. But this option isn’t really feasible for most clothing in most places. I looked at the website for Matrushka Constructions, a store in LA that locally sources and hand makes all their clothes, but a dress similar to the one I got is 6 times the price. That being said even just simple hems or taking things in a bit can improve a piece of clothing so much and would be a simple fairly cheap thing to offer in stores. My grandmother is really short and has to hem all her own pants but for people who don’t know how to sew or don’t have time it’s a lot harder. All the fast fashion brands keep trying to shove people into a few basic sizes to make manufacturing cheap and easy but thats not how it should work!

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