performance: the intrinsically intimate nature of garment making
In the early stages of our project we implicated our bodies in conversations about femininity, labour and intimacy in craft. Driven by the knowledge that all clothing is inherently handmade, and consumer trends in the global West drive the oppression of women in the global East, we decided to frame a slow fashion process defined by the conscious use of hand-sewing traditions, the repurposing of discarded or surplus materials, and the transformation of the public realm through private labour. With no prior experience in garment making, we shared a single sewing machine and worked on the floor of our Montreal apartment. We learned to hand-sew each other a dress: sourcing local materials, measuring each other’s bodies, and dipping our hands in black ink as we worked to mark every motion and mistake on the white cotton, showing the human touch essential to garment-making, tracing the presence of the maker on the garment itself. As a performance, we dressed each other in front of an audience, exposing an intimacy that no longer resonates with modern-day garment production. Through the deliberate use of a historically gendered craft and dress, we reclaim softness not as fragility, but as resistance. The gesture speaks not only to the invisible labour of garment workers, but to the labour that builds the spaces we inhabit. In the realm of design and production on a global scale, women’s delicate work and influence are often unseen and undervalued. Until recently, within the field of architecture women were left out entirely. As we continue to find precedents in historically celebrated works, almost exclusively designed by men, we risk reinforcing an architectural canon shaped by centuries of patriarchy sustained by its genealogy. Such architecture is often measured by monumentality and legacy. Contrarily, textiles have long been associated with feminine domesticity. Our project blurs this binary, celebrating sewing not only as making, but as designing and building. By bringing acts of traditional sewing into architectural discourse, we create space for the values of softness and shared authorship.
all images: sierra dustin + chloe watkinson
39 on site review 47 :: standing still
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