Stitching Identities: Clothing Production and Consumption in Mexico City

Abstract

T he 1855 essay “La Costurera” in Mexicanos pintados por sí mismos highlights productive, symbolic, and material connections between sewing women and the consumers of the clothing that they make. The seamstress takes her place among other typical characters that animated Mexico City in the nineteenth century, such as water carriers, female boarding house managers, auctioneers, chambermaids, coachmen, and clerks who were also illustrated and feted in essays in the costumbrista volume. Author J. M. Rivera identifies costureras de cajón , or seamstresses employed in retail workshops in the city center, as the most typical of “these workers who sustain fashion.” He also identifies various costureras domesticas —those employed in private homes as live-in servants, those who visited the homes of regular customers, and those who sewed for others for pay out of their own homes (Perez Salas 1998) 1 . These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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