#professional dressmaker

[professorpski]

The dressmaker should advertise her business by wearing neat, well-made, and well-fitted dresses. They need not be of fine material, but she should make them herself. The customer will ask, 'Did you make that dress?'

Consider it common sense or a historical version of self-promotion, Helen Hall’s advice in 1943 for those thinking of moving from home dressmaker to professional dressmaker was surely wise. I have found people who ask me that question are disappointed when it turns out I am wearing one of the very few dresses that I have bought as ready-to-wear. Yes, I have a public to satisfy. ;-)

This is from Hall’s Simplified Home Sewing, a book which offers a lot of still pertinent information on the craft and a raft of suggestions for what are now vintage details. 

[professorpski]

Visiting seamstresses who sew by the day find tissue-paper patterns a splendid aid, for unfortunately this class of needlewoman is usually expected to produce greater results in less time than any other maker of women's clothes. From experience, many of these workers have found it much more desirable to have each season a set of foundation patterns from which to work...

The visiting seamstress, who really was a dressmaker but not a designer, was a stock figure in middle-class homes the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. This was before the garment industry could create good quality women’s wear, so a woman either learned the skills herself or depending on this professional.

This quotation is from Individualizing Tissue-Paper Patterns (1923) from the Woman’s Institute of Domestic Arts & Sciences. Such patterns were themselves a vast industry by 1900 and Mary Brooks Pickens wrote this booklet to allow a woman to get a custom fit using them. She offered this advice to the visiting seamstress and warned her not to allow her customers to offer her their own paper pattern choices. Why? Because they might have no idea what pattern would work with what fabric and, and this is only implied, become really annoying to work for. So, she wanted the custom dressmaker hold the line on her own choice of tissue patterns each year, and then alter them to fit each customer. And thus avoid a lot of poor choices being forced upon her.

[professorpski]

Tact is also an essential of the successful dressmaker. ... She must also seem to be following the suggestions [of her customer], while in reality she may have completely changed the idea that her customer had when she arrived.

This passage goes on to explain how the dressmaker should go so far as to humor her customer and move a pin at her direction during a fitting, only to move it back when making up the dress. I must confess I once made up a skirt for a relative who insisted it was too big by 1 inch, to which I objected on the grounds that it would be too tight, she insisted again, so I took it in 1 inch. And it was too tight. Clearly, I should have humored her by nodding in agreement and then not following her directions. 

It does seem strange that women would pay for expertise by hiring a professional dressmaker only to ignore her advice. This is from Helen Hall’s chapter on “Sewing Commercially” in her book Simplified Home Sewing from 1943.

[professorpski]

[The Dressmaker should] have proper light when she is fitting a dress. For instance, when brilliant colors are used for evening dresses, the effect is likely to be very displeasing in the sunlight. However, if the room is darkened and the lights are turned on, the effect that the dress is going to have by artificial light can be secured; then, if any changes are required to bring out the beauty of the dress, they can be made before it is finished.

So the Woman’s Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences told its correspondence school students in The Dressmaker and Tailor Shop in 1924, and the same holds true today. I have been driven to distraction trying to match or harmonize colors in fabric or trim under the fluorescent lights of a shop, only to find that in daylight they looked very different. So bring your bolt of fabric near the window if you can, or ask for a swatch in order to take it outside.

Notice here too the idea that very bright colors are too much for daytime, likely to tire out the eye. Anything that was very bright was supposed to be an inexpensive novelty, like a scarf in a trendy color that you would tire of before it wore it. You didn’t want that happen to a dress which you expected to wear and wear for several years.