Saturday morning at the Lapjesmarkt in Utrecht. It is still early, the market people are quietly drinking the hot coffee from their thermos and bouncing jokes back and forth across the Breedstraat. On their stalls there are woolen rolls and colorful coupons, leftover pieces of fabric of several meters that are often sold for next to nothing. There are tubes with buttons and bins with ribbons, and there is an audience that snoops between the fabrics until the eye lingers on a flower, a checkered pattern or a beautiful piece of linen.
I grew up in Utrecht, and as a child I occasionally visited the Lapjesmarkt with my mother. She taught me to sew when she was about eight years old on her first manual sewing machine, an old-fashioned black metal Singer with the brand name in gold curly letters. Like her, I could be enchanted by fabrics: she by stripes or linen, me by colorful quilting fabrics or cow print plush. I made my first pants from that cow print, a model from the zeros with flared legs.
My mother had learned to sew from her mother. She first came to the Lapjesmarkt after moving from the Achterhoek to Utrecht in the eighties to move into rooms. Thirty years ago, my paternal grandmother used to walk past the stalls here. She not only made her own dresses, blouses and trousers, but also sheets, pillowcases and curtains. She loved to sew, which worked out well, because the budget was tight and in the 1950s it was comparatively expensive to buy everything new.
Today the proportions are different. The last decades of the twentieth century saw the arrival of more and more and cheaper clothing; the brightly lit affairs of international chains today are full of them. There is also a lot for sale online, an overwhelming amount in fact. The online fashion marketplace Zalando alone offers almost half a million different items of clothing. There are now 300 million products for sale on Vinted, a platform for second-hand clothing. The prices are low, the offer is large, and the convenience is even greater: clothing can be delivered to your door in a few clicks, sometimes also free of charge.
hand skills
With so much choice you would say: there should be something for every taste, body shape and wallet. Still, crowds of people gather at the Lapjesmarkt on Saturday mornings. By 11 o’clock it’s elbows at the haberdashery stall for zippers, buttons and trouser elastic. The popularity of making your own clothes has increased rather than decreased in recent years, according to Natalie de Koning, owner of the Amsterdam sewing café De Stitch. De Koning was trained as a designer and started giving sewing lessons in 2011. That went so well that three and a half years ago she decided to set up a course center and open studio in Amsterdam-West.
De Stitch offers all kinds of courses and workshops, from sewing lessons to repair classes. The audience varies, but is predominantly young at De Stitch. ‘The younger generation, who were not naturally taught to sew, apparently would like to learn it’, says De Koning while sitting at one of the large workshop tables with a cup of coffee. De Stitch was closed for a while during the pandemic, but demand remained high. ‘People started making clothes at home as well.’ They were also able to get the necessary help with this on site: instructional videos on YouTube and more recently Instagram and TikTok have taken off in recent years.
The question is why making it yourself continues to attract such appeal despite the temptations of the fashion industry. De Koning can hardly put his finger on that: the motives of her students vary widely, she says. The attention for sewing clothes grew during the pandemic, when similar ‘hand skills’ such as pottery and sourdough cultivation were more widely adopted. Just like making clothes, they are tangible hobbies that can give satisfaction in an age of digitization and isolation. But the pandemic is not the cause: even before that time, the demand for sewing lessons was already rising, according to De Koning.
Good fits
Most homemakers on the Lapjesmarkt have also been making clothes for years, and give various reasons for doing so. Sometimes they are very practical. Kimberley van Kallen (29) makes clothes because she likes to do it, but also because it is sometimes difficult to find exactly the right fit in the store. It is especially important with trousers, Van Kallen notices. “That’s a really important reason for me to make them myself.” Laura Feenstra (38) learned to make medieval costumes by hand for the Archeon open-air museum, but now she also likes to make her own trousers and dungarees, she says. Feenstra is in a wheelchair, and even then it is not always easy to find clothes that fit well.
The fact that Feenstra and Van Kallen cannot find exactly what they are looking for in stores is perhaps not so much a contradiction as a result of the large supply in stores. To keep production numbers high and costs low, it helps fashion companies to standardize their products as much as possible, for example in terms of sizing. That makes production more efficient. However, standard sizes leave little room for exceptions – even though every body is in fact an exception.
Uniform style
Most fashion collections, especially in the lower and middle segments, must also appeal to a wide audience. This also ensures a certain uniformity in style, with similar silhouettes, materials and prints in most stores. Several customers at the Lapjesmarkt are looking for ways not to go with the flow. So is Olivia Vergeer (22), who is standing at one of the stalls with a plastic bag full of newly purchased fabrics on her arm. Vergeer likes to wear garments that are ‘unique’, she says. For that reason, she always bought a lot of second-hand. Last year she took sewing lessons for the first time to be able to make her own clothes.
From her youth in Suriname, Roline Redmond (73) has been carefully designed and used to tailor-made clothing. In this line she also designs and sews her clothes herself; today she is looking for black waffle fabric for a long dress ‘african style’. Redmond thinks style is very important. “Be stylish, dress stylishly,” she says firmly. “It doesn’t have to be expensive or flashy, it’s about wearing something that makes you feel good.” Then homemade clothing works better than ready-made clothing, she says. ‘When you buy ready-to-wear, you buy what everyone else is wearing. Often it doesn’t really suit you.’
Shape yourself
Being able to make their own clothes also offers more options to men, for whom the choice in (online) stores is generally more limited. Not only in size, but also in variety: as a man, try to find a suitable skirt, dress or jumpsuit. Or, says Jaap van Krugten (32), just a cotton or linen sleeveless top, ‘one that doesn’t look like a wife beater’. He therefore makes them himself, just like trousers, shirts and shirts. Instead of working with sewing patterns from magazines or the internet – there are few of those for men either, says Van Krugten – he traces items of clothing from his own closet onto patterned paper. Sometimes he adjusts something. Over time, he has come up with a few models that are just right for him, he says. That is what Van Krugten thinks is the great joy of making yourself: being able to design something exactly the way you want.
That is relevant for clothing, because by designing clothing we also shape ourselves. Style, or styling, writes fashion scientist Carol Tulloch, is a way of telling the world about ourselves, constructing an image of ourselves. This is certainly possible with ready-to-wear: we turn the edge of a trouser leg, roll up a sleeve, open one, two or three buttons. We tuck in a shirt, or let it hang over. Self-made fashion goes one step further in this. If clothing is a (visual) language, homemade clothing makes it possible to choose a different vocabulary than the fashion industry offers us – or to speak with more nuances. Just that collar, just that fabric, just that shoulder line. The word ‘homemade fashion’ thus acquires a double meaning.
The actual making process also plays a role in making that yourself. We not only want to be our own designer, but also our own craftsman. We want to make ourselves ourselves: to be there while it happens, to keep control over the process. If that succeeds, and the end result is in line with the image we want to present of ourselves, it can be very satisfying. That’s not just something of the moment. My grandmother, for example, initially made clothes herself for economic reasons, but when I talk to her about it again, it’s not the first thing she mentions. She mentions the joy of making, and the joy of wearing clothes that fit you just right.
Challenges
However, making your own also has its challenges. Making a garment first and foremost takes time. Vergeer: ‘I used to watch those edited videos on TikTok, then it looked like something you could do in an afternoon. But I’ve been working on the same garment for three sewing lessons now.’ And anyone who has ever sat behind a sewing machine also knows the countless points where things can go wrong: margins that are too tight, the stretch fabric bulges, and did I sew that panel backwards after all? Finally, the result can also be very different from what you had hoped: just not the right model, too narrow, yet too short. For example, a DIY project can turn into a battle with yourself – with your vision, and with your abilities.
That’s where experience comes in, and technology. The good thing is: you can learn that. You are not your own fashion designer after a few sewing lessons, says De Koning. She herself studied for several years. But the basic techniques are a first step. That knowledge brings something else with it: understanding how a piece of clothing is put together, how to fix it if it breaks, how to duplicate it if you like it. Learning to sew is no longer always cheaper or easier than buying new clothes, but it is an in-depth investment that can pay for itself for a lifetime – and sometimes generations.