A while back I did an interview with an Italian designer and asked him about the knitwear in his collection.
He replied me in a a rather vague way, so I asked him if he had used an Italian historical mill I knew to make his piece, and he suddenly became quite angry and replied in an unnecessarily nasty tone, "I'd rather not tell you", an answer that made me feel a bit annoyed at him since he almost implied that the company that had actually made his pieces wasn't worth as much as he was.
I felt the same after reading over and over again in the last 24 hours the news about one design from Marc Jacobs' Autumn/Winter 2014 collection.
The design in question consists in a pale ankle-length pink dress made with a series of organza flower motifs hand-stuffed with yarn, a type of fabric commissioned by Jacob's studio that costs $11,000 a metre.
According to the information released the "Puffy Clouds Embroidery Dress" (could it be inspired by Will Cotton's imaginary cotton candy landscapes populated at times by pop icons à la Katy Perry?) was made in a "Swiss embroidery mill".
Three people worked on the fabric for one week and the dress will be lent out on a limited basis to celebrities and magazines. At the end of the season, it will be retired to the fashion house archives, but wealthy people out there will be able to buy it for $28,000.
Now, what genuinely made me curious and partially annoyed me at the same time, was the bit referred to the "Swiss embroidery mill".
You indeed wonder if, like my interviewee, Jacobs is too proud to release the name of the company that made the fabric, or if there is something else behind anonymity.
While there are a few companies producing Swiss embroidery in Europe, most of them are actually based in India.
If that is the case, you easily wonder if the "Swiss embroidery mill" label means "a Switzerland-based mill producing Swiss embroidery", or "a mill based in an exploitable part of the world that produces Swiss embroidery".
Which leads us to wonder if the dress is so expensive because it is made by hand by properly paid workers, or if fashion is not only being inspired by art, but by the modern art market in which the inflated prices paid by some rich and clueless collectors have caused artists with no real talent to become new Michelangelos, allowing their mediocre works of art to reach stellar prices.
Maybe that's the case with this dress, at least until Marc Jacobs explains us where is the supposed Swiss embroidery mill and maybe films for us the happy workforce labouring over the puffy puffy clouds.
Anyway, to get a bit more knowledgeable about Swiss embroidery, I'm embedding here a book entitled Swiss Embroidery and the Lace Industry, a special report published in 1908 and written by W.A. Graham Clark, a Special Agent of the US Department of Commerce and Labor.
The report focused on the manufacture of cotton goods, lace and embroidery in Switzerland and the exports towards the United States. Key points such as low wages of the workers and the juxtaposition between hand operated and power machines (shuttle or schiffli machines) are considered, and the agent also explains the process behind lace and embroidery making, adding a short analysis of embroidering accessories and yarns as well.
Additional essays report about the state of the embroidering industry in other countries, such as France and Germany, and British India. In 1906, a consul writes, Calcutta exported to the United States chikon embroideries for $42,072, which meant that two thirds of all chikon work exported from India went to the United States.
Even then the men and women who did this work received very little for their labour: the consul from British India reports that an artisan may have worked 10-12 hours a day to produce an article that required six days to make and that was then sold for less than £1, while the artisan only received 33 cents (bear in mind we are at the beginning of the 1900s).
Though dated this is an interesting introduction to Swiss embroidery and to some issues linked to lace production.
Read it and let's hope that, in the meantime, Jacobs will provide us with further information about his fancy lace mill in the land of pink clouds.
Until then, to paraphrase the cloud-shaped Lumpy Space Princess out of Adventure Time, "Lump off, Mark!"
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