Breif History of Tailoring

Tailoring developed slowly in Europe between the twelfth and fourteenth century. The tailoring guilds dates back to 1297, they were made up of weavers, and cloth merchants. In the Middle Ages clothing was regarded as a way of concealing the body, but in the Renaissance came the accentuation of the human form. The loose robe was the standard uniform of the medieval period which was easily constructed from a single piece or two of cloth which could be shortened and tightened to the wearer.  Soon the cloth was cut and pieced together to bring into the figure of the human body. This was the birth of tailoring and as fashion changed this called for more skills from the tailor.

 

Cloth was the distinguishing feature of garments; the wearer took responsibility for the design and production of his own clothes. Little by little, the tailor had more to say in the fashion and production of the garment. Master tailors grew in towns and eventually became responsible for the clothing in society. The art and science of tailoring became a ‘highly specialized, complex, and jealously guarded craft.’

Italy, Spain and France became the centre for fashionable dress, with power, wealth, and influence. ‘Italy reached its great flowering during the age of Michaelangelo, followed by Spain early in the 17th century. France reached its fashionable peak for tailoring during the long reign of Louis XIV (1643 - 1715), when foppish young men from all over Europe flocked to Paris for their wardrobes.’ When the French king died in 1715 a shift in fashion influence occurred.

In 1650 men began to give up the doublet, hose, and cloak that had been the staple items of their wardrobe since the 1500s, and began to wear coats, vests, and breeches, the three components which would become and begin the identity of modern dress.

The English not only turned away from the doublet and hose, but quickly moved through the phase of embroidered 'ostentation' decreed by the French court. Due to the civil war (l642 - 1649) the brocades and velvets, the silk and pastel satins and powdered wigs became apparent. 

Over two centuries later, the Puritans and Cavaliers  fought each other during the civil war. The Cavaliers were more interested in fashion than their moral convictions. English Puritans moved away from the highly decorative and delicate court styles, and took up a more practical form wearing mainly black. Both the landed gentry and the newer mercantile class became progressively less exquisitely dressed during the 18th century, and far more sombre and sober.

 

‘By the early 19th century, sobriety (in dress at any rate) had begun to penetrate even the court circle itself, and kings, consorts, and princes were seen to dress in a manner almost identical with their subjects. By mid-century the age of stovepipe hats, umbrellas, and frock coats -- each in glossy black -- was firmly in place.’

London tailors began to dominate fashion; they evolved a style for masculine clothing which was a subtle blend of landed gentry, sporting attire, and bourgeois business wear. This was produced in the Industrial Revolution. In the past court clothing had not been constructed with the concern of fit of the garment, instead for decoration, fabric, and colour. In London they shifted away from the ornamental and concentrated on the fit. Tailors were trained to use wool cloth, and over years of experimentation and practice developed techniques for ‘molding’ the cloth close to the body. In short, the tailor could now develop a new aesthetic of dress: they ‘could mimic the real body, while at the same time "improving" and idealizing it’. It was no longer a question of voluminous yards of flowing silken brocade. Men became ‘gentlemen’ displaying discretion, simplicity, and the perfection of cut. In terms of fashion, the culmination of that radical turn taken in mid-17th century. 

 

‘There has been tremendous innovations in these past hundred years in fashion and the art of tailoring: sewing machines now do the work on straight seams better than could be done by hand; new fabric technology has history produced more comfortable cloths; fashions have adapted to more leisurely, climate-controlled lifestyles. But tailoring is still, and likely to remain so, an art. It has not been brought down to the level of a science. The tailor still believes in making personalized clothing, statements of fashion for the individual, as he always has done’.