The Sewing Machine

Abstract

The sewing machine was one of the most revolutionary machines in history. It was adopted very quickly after its invention in clothing manufacturing centers across Europe and the United States in the 1850s and 1860s. But even though it started out as an industrial machine, it quickly turned into a remarkably successful consumer good. Perhaps around 90 percent of all sewing machines sold in the world from 1875 to the 1920s were sold as consumer goods for domestic use. This growth in demand for the domestic sewing machines not only precipitated the growth in home-produced fashion but also shaped the changes in that fashion by making the creation of some styles easier and others more difficult. Fashion historians have often demonstrated the close interplay between cultural change and fashion. But a greater familiarization of the diffusion of the sewing machine around the world offers fashion historians the prospect of a more analytical focus on the behavior of ordinary households in different countries and how they chose to produce family clothing, explored the constraints imposed by the dominant technology of production, and, as a result, began to create and adopt new styles of fashion.

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