I was talking to my grandma about her old sewing patterns from the 70s and she said 'we didn't have stretch fabric, we had to design for movement'. It's making me rethink all my modern designs.

4 comments

4 Comments

My aunt collects vintage patterns and she showed me a jumpsuit with all these clever pleats and gussets under the arms. The fabric was this stiff cotton, but you could actually move in it. Modern clothes just rely on the stretch of the material to do all the work. It makes you appreciate the actual design skill that went into making things functional. Your grandma has a point about designing for movement.

casey2682mo ago

Yeah, that bit about the gussets under the arms is so true. I found an old work jacket at a thrift store with the same idea, a diamond-shaped piece of fabric under the arm. I could actually raise my arms all the way to reach for stuff without the whole jacket riding up. It's a small detail, but it makes a huge difference. You don't realize how restricted you are in most modern jackets until you try something built like that.

the_spencer2mo ago

My 2018 raincoat has those gussets and the seams still ripped after a year. @johnkelly is right that old stuff was built better, but modern manufacturing just can't match that quality at normal prices. It's a trade-off we're stuck with.

skyler_johnson3220d ago

Right? That jumpsuit sounds genius. It's wild how much we just let spandex do the heavy lifting now instead of actual engineering. Makes you wonder what other little tricks got lost along the way.