Fashioning
During the Great Depression, fashion was at a creative peak--not because the clothes were elaborate, but because women had to get crafty with what they had at the time. Many families could not afford to buy clothes, despite their necessity. A single dress would cost families around $5 during the Depression (around $98 today); a men’s suit sold for around $25, the equivalent of $600 today. For families that were living off only one person's income, trying to care for a large household with multiple children or extended family members, this was not feasible at all: a monthly income for most people was around $90 per month for workers lucky enough to even have a job. This is why we say women were being creative: they supplied their families with diapers, dishrags and clothing items.
A story in Successful Farming magazine helps to illustrate a synthesis of domestic and creative labor that usually isn’t grounded in necessity today. It profiles 15-year-old Luella Smith, the youngest child of a Wisconsin farmer and model 4-H Club member, describing the many household items she has fashioned from used flour sacks: dresses, dresser scarfs, tablecloths. The young woman praises a club called "The Merry Sewers" for its approach to household thriftiness: "I like the name as it shows we do not think of sewing as drudgery but rather as a pleasure." The article on Smith is equally interesting for its accidental juxtaposition of male- and female-coded farm labor. Luella contributes to the household economy not only through her skills, but an attitude described by her club's advisor: "She is such a modest little girl that one cannot help liking her. Her good work crops out not only in her projects but in everything she does." One historical challenge, then, is seeing Luella's tools and skills on par with a manly advertisement accidentally juxtaposed to the article.
Painters and printmakers in the Federal Arts Project sometimes showed women at work, fashioning. Whether their labor occurs in a factory or at home, is undertaken individually or collectively, is shown to be repetitive or creative, is created for oneself or sold to others--the small details are important. Today there’s a comparable debate over women’s work in the fast fashion industry, whose products magically appear on websites for magically low costs. Where are the images of those dress-fashioners, the compensation for their creative work?