Home Made, Tailor Made and Readymade Garments

Home Made, Tailor Made and Readymade Garments

Introduction

Clothing has always been important to people because it meets one of their primary needs of human being. Thus, clothing and textiles tend to reflect and offer an important basis for interpreting the social, economic, and political conditions of a nation. Clothing industry or the fashion industry is also a part of garment or apparel industry. The origin of apparel industry dates back to Stone Age when man used leaves, barks and animal skin for covering oneself for protection from climatic conditions.

The apparel industry in the United States has gone through several stages, as follows:

The Family Stage

During which all clothing was made at home by family members. The Hired Stage

In this stage, families engaged a dressmaker or tailor to come into their homes and make their clothing.

The Customer Stage

In this stage dressmakers or tailors maintained shops to which patrons came to have their clothing made.

The Commercial Stage

This introduced men’s and women’s furnishing stores that featured ready to wear as well as custom apparel; and

The Manufacturing Stage

This supplied readymade clothing for retail and wholesale trade. There has been considerable over lapping of these methods of clothing production, so that all five stages may be found in most periods of our history.

As the nation became more prosperous and secue, people showed more interest in fashion. Around 1800 century, the custom tailor shops appeared. Here the independent tailor made garments for his customers were made on special order. The seamstress appeared somewhat later. Seamstresses set up shops side by side with the tailors and became known as mistress dress makers.

In general, the apparel industry concentrates on three major methods of garment making namely home-made, tailor made and ready-made.