As someone who has been sewing for most of my life, I have spent a lot of time dissecting and piecing together how clothing items are made. Although I take pride in what I make, it doesn’t make much sense to me when people seem to marvel at what I make but put little thought into who made the clothing on their back. There is little difference in the overall process, we each cut fabric according to a pattern, pin it together, and stitch it up with a sewing machine, so why does my work get labeled as “handmade” when others do not?  

While “handmade” is usually defined as something made by skilled artisans rather than machines (CQ), what is often overlooked is that virtually every piece of clothing is shaped by human hands, and those hands are skilled labor. There is no machine on earth where you can simply toss in a piece of fabric and have it produce a finished garment ready for shelves. While a worthwhile distinction can be made between a piece made by one person which is therefore a product of their unique individual perspective, and clothing made by a long chain of workers, each alienated from the final result, the term “handmade” fails to effectively capture this nuance.

In our global market, consumers are almost completely separated from the production process that brings a final product into their hands, and clothing is no exception. Clothing has always been used as a tool to craft class identity, so there has always been clothing considered valuable and high-class. As profit-driven production systems encourage cheaper manufacturing methods, the class signifier increasingly becomes quality, and “quality” becomes more desirable. But how can we determine quality? Alienated from the production of clothing and understanding little of it, so the furthest most consumers look is the tag. 

In the US, a garment tag is only required to tell you clearly care details, fiber content, and country of origin (CQ). The fiber content can be hard to parse, so the first thing many consumers digest is the country of origin. However, a tag like “Made in Italy” says nothing inherently about the craftsmanship of the product, the origin of its components, the treatment of its workers, or even their nationality, but it carries certain associations. “Made in Italy” conjures an image of a quaint workshop with experienced, skilled workers peacefully stitching a fine leather bag, whereas “Made in Bangladesh” is often imagined as a cramped sweatshop full of uneducated, low-class workers and child laborers. Companies are aware of this. In fact, it has been documented that many Italian garment workers are not paid a living wage (CQ), and large brands pay seamstresses at home to sew garments for pennies on the dollar (CQ) or take advantage of subcontractors who hire migrant laborers and operate with dubious legality. Why would brands go to such lengths to obtain these “Made in Europe” labels?

I argue that the perception of “handmade” directly stems from Orientalism. This Orientalist framework views white, Western hands as inherently more intellectual and rational, while workers in the Global South are seen as experienced but lacking wisdom. Western laborers are granted a certain amount of “existential thickness”; their actions are seen as the result of deliberate choice, with each stitch representing an amalgamation of intentionally cultivated skill and a complete intellectual understanding of the final product. In contrast, a product made in the Global South is assumed to be flimsily made by workers who apply little mental faculty while creating it.

Of course, many factors influence the perception of goods from a particular country; multinational chains of production, propaganda and advertising, labor laws, natural resources, and historical production methods. However, what I want to focus on is the perception of the individual white worker versus the worker in the Global South. When companies want to be seen as sustainable, ethical, and artisanal, why are they so quick to wave their “Made in Europe” and “Made in the USA” labels, when it is just as possible to meet these goals working in any country? There is a dichotomy in how labor is perceived: white workers with years of experience in a specialized skill are craftsmen, whereas brown workers are sweatshop laborers.

In Edward Said’s framework of Orientalism, the West is seen as the actor and the East as the acted-upon. This is mirrored in the common conception of the manufacturing chain, where products are conceptualized and designed in the West and then hastily assembled in the East. One central element of Orientalism is the positioning of the West as inherently more rational and innovative. This affects our perception of labor because we consider Western makers as influencing their work with their personal experience and intentionally developed skills, whereas Eastern workers are not seen as intellectually contributing to their work in the same way. 

Even when an item made by workers in the Global South is labeled “handmade” or “artisan” and sold abroad, it still must fit an exoticized lens. It must be a “village craft” or “ancient artform”. This restricts the workers to representing an unchanging cultural tradition. Even when their country has a rich history of innovation, the workers are not expected to innovate and are stripped of their individuality, only for their products are then sold for a fraction of what a similar item would cost from a European luxury house.

This orientalized conception of “handmade” is a product of history and the racial categorization that has been incredibly influential for centuries, but in the end it is just a fabrication. If we truly want to cultivate a more ethical fashion industry we need to look beyond popular narratives, only then can we effectively move forward.