Comment by 3RTB297
11 hours ago
It's important to remember that factory-made clothes are not that old as a thing. And it's only been a few generations where nearly all clothing is expected to be factory-made (even though most factories are still humans quickly pumping out items), let alone carry brand names on them like you're a nascar.
And thinking of clothing as akin to open source software is fair. Before the industrial revolution, all clothing was hand-made, almost entirely at home or by a friend, or a tailor if you had money. From the end of the 18th century until pretty much the 1980s, sewing patterns were the paper version of open source software. Could be copied infinitely, forked and changed, traded and borrowed, or created from scratch if you knew what you were doing. Magazines included them to boost sales, just like how software magazines used to include pages of code you could try at home - no license needed.
Fabric stores were commonplace for a century or more, and big box stores reserved a huge amount of floor space for fabric sales up through the 90s. Patterns were trivially inexpensive, and picking your favorite material for the pattern was how you could personalize it.
i just reverse-engineered a beloved work shirt and even improved the fit. but that's time-consuming compared to just picking up some cheap top at walmart, really more of a luxury activity than anything these days, i'm aware.
They still sell patterns to be fair at hobby shops.
Fabric shops are still a thing too, they're often hubs for local tailoring scenes. But they are shutting down one after the other, unfortunately.
That said, hand crafts like tailoring did get a resurgence during the panny-D, I hope it stays. The local Lidl here has affordable sowing machines for sale.