A Stitch in Time
Clothes can convey status. There’s couture for the very, very rich and designer wear for the well-off. Being able to cast off sweaters and dresses lovingly made by Mom and Grandma for mass-produced clothing was once a symbol of improving family fortunes.
Today, the handmade look is hip. The new status symbol is the look of unique handmade clothing, embellished with labor-intensive, quirky and often irregular decorations.
“I remember my mother crocheting in Ohio and being sort of embarrassed, but now it’s in Dolce & Gabbana,” said David Wolfe, creative director of the Doneger Group, a New York trend forecasting agency.
On the street and on the runway, elaborate beading, embroidery, crochet, applique and weaving have found new fans. Jeans edged in ethnic trims became the summer’s runaway hit. Simple sweater twin sets splashed with elegant beading may be more common than empty champagne bottles this holiday season. And when spring clothes arrive in stores, they’ll be knitted, embroidered, beaded, painted and punched in a gleeful celebration of decoration.
Some fashion forecasters promoted sleek, silvery clothes as the look for the millennium. But by the time the calendar reads 2000, handcrafted, sometimes rustic clothes will prevail.
“I think it’s a symptom of the backlash against futurism and technology,” Wolfe said. “So much of what we have to deal with in our lives is high-tech and mass-produced and inhuman. In a deep subconscious level, that is troubling us. If we can deck ourselves out in things that have the touch of the human hand, it makes us feel good.”
That doesn’t mean we’re all returning to the sewing basket. “I don’t think anyone in the world is decorating their own jeans today,” Wolfe said. “We want the feeling, but we are so time-crunched.”
Instead, this generation has found a new skill: looking like no one else. The handmade idea appeals to fashion hounds who are seeking uniqueness.
But it’s technology--computerized knitting, beading and embroidering machines--that can make labor-intensive adornments accessible at lower prices.
Most of the 1990s were defined by minimalism’s sleek and identical styles (remember black sheath dresses at every price point?). Personality was often squeezed out of clothes that increasingly were sold by giant department-store chains. At the high-fashion level, wearing a single label head to toe became easier as designers built boutiques in homage to their look. Fans of quirky, one-of-a-kind clothes were left to forage in vintage stores. That’s where teens rediscovered the hippie era’s hand-knitted ponchos, decorated denims and ethnic styles, which are the height of today’s fashion.
“We’re calling it bohemian chic. It’s taking that ‘60s and ‘70s look and making it chic,” said Phyllis Cohen, vice president of sales for Bette Paige, a contemporary knitwear maker in Industry. “The chic part is fine-tuning it, making it look expensive, like an art piece. There’s a little more expert finish to it.”
The company employs scores of women who crochet afghan squares into halter tops, stitch raffia onto sweater necklines and embroider flowers onto machine-knit camisoles.
Momentum for hand-embellished clothes has been building at the designer level for several seasons. Yohji Yamamoto got the ball of yarn rolling for hand-knits with his hugely oversized tunics and skirts for fall ’98. With yarn thick as rope, his sweaters were unmistakably handcrafted. Less voluminous imitations have followed every season since. A season later, Gucci’s Tom Ford started the stampede for hand-decorated denim when he sent blue jeans bedecked in feathers, beads and embroidery down his spring ’99 runway. And Fendi’s hand crocheted, beaded, embroidered and appliqued baguette bags have revived the company’s fashion and financial status. For three years, Fendi’s designers have offered hundreds of styles, each slightly different, helping to make the baguette so desirable that the Beverly Hills boutique has been sold out for months.
Designers like Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci and Fendi are supporting the return to handwork with extravaganza collections as flashy as a Hollywood blockbuster. Pants and skirts, bags and belts drip with fringe, beads and rhinestones. But the trend for handwork has its indie producers who are trying to make a personal statement with their clothes.
“It’s not about the brand label, but about the craft of it,” said designer Gregory Parkinson, a former Los Angeles designer now based in New York. His commitment to handwork has him weaving strips of denim into skirts, shredding embroidered skirts and assembling garments from puzzle pieces of vintage fabric.
“Each piece is unique in the literal sense of the word because it’s handmade,” Parkinson said.
Handwork can expand the universe of clothing decoration into artwork. New York designer Susan Cianciolo shows her modern couture in art gallery settings to emphasize the craft. She prints polka dots onto fabric with nailheads, silk screens patterns onto shirts and offers a do-it-yourself denim skirt that comes with an assortment of safety pins.
French designer Agnes B. mimics the brush strokes of painter Mark Rothko in fabrics for her new spring collection. The fabric isn’t hand-painted, but it’s less costly as a result.
Stores that specialize in handmade-looking goods, like Silver Lake’s Uncle Jer’s, are finding new customers in search of personalized styles. The store is selling everything from vintage Indian wedding saris to hand-dyed hemp-fabric hats.
“For such a long time, there was wearable art, but the design was lacking. The opposite was the hippie look that was thrown together,” said Berda Morley, co-owner of Uncle Jer’s. “Now people are making things that are both inspired and well-made.”
Whether it’s a simple crocheted sweater or an elaborately embroidered dress, fashion with a touch of the hand has staying power.
“People want things that aren’t about one season,” said Parkinson. “For a lot of women that is so much more relevant, especially for a woman who doesn’t want to be in a head-to-toe, one-season look.”
The shift toward unique pieces has brought about a renewed quest for personalization and craft, as well as a new definition of luxury, said Parkinson.
“If it can be mass-produced, it’s not luxurious.”
Valli Herman-Cohen can be reached at valli.herman-cohen@latimes.com.
