I think socks are basically automated. Maybe everything knitted?
Boring answer: flexible, stretchy materials - fabric - are way harder for machines to deal with. Your clothing production could be automated if it was all rigid plastic exoskeleton armor, though.
It is fascinating to watch How It's Made or other factory-porn kind of video and see which parts are heavily automated and which parts are done by hand; sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn't, and I wonder if there's economic logic to it or just path dependence.
Ah! That's interesting that it really is a difficult technological challenge. Huh.
My sweater appears to be knitted in one piece for the torso, but the sleeves look to be added separately. I guess because knitting a tube works easily.
This morning one of the kids asked his brother why there were holes in his pants and I thought he was making a joke (for your legs to go in) but there actually were holes torn on the back of his brother's pants.
A closely-related area is laundry folding. This turns out to be incredibly difficult!
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/22/1130552239/robot-folding-laundry
2: This is also my understanding--the tech isn't there.
If the tech doesn't exist, why isn't Musk selling it regardless.
Actual laugh at 9.
Derek Guy (the menswear guy that suddenly everyone started getting fed on Twitter by the algorithm) has quite a lot of blogposts and twitter feeds about the actual costs of garment manufacturing, and the processes involved.
7: but for home use, a robot that was very slow at folding but didn't procrastinate could still be the better choice.
And I think it would be pretty simple for a machine to fold sheets - at least flat ones - for a hotel linen service.
Folding fitted sheets is easy if you have low standards.
With clothing, because of the sweatshop thing and the environment thing, I've been trying to buy fewer, better pieces. It's hard to be sure about the "better". Also, I've been trying to buy wool instead of artificial fabrics, but I'm thinking I can't resist PolarTec Alpha much longer.
I'm sure I mentioned at the time that in 2008/09 I worked on a case involving clothing manufacture and got a tour of the client's factory in Lawrence Mass. It was pretty neat -- the machines for making the fabric out of thread looked like they belonged on a Star Trek ship. They were making fluffy pink fleece (maybe for North Face?) the day I was there, so there were a number of different steps.
There wasn't any of the finished sewing that the OP is about -- I had a client in Kabul that did that when I toured few years later, and it was rows of women at sewing machines.
Baskets can only be made by hand too. I'm wondering if that's why the cheap baskets at TJMaxx type stores are now imprinted plastic, rather than cane. Or else I've moved to a poor enough place the store owners think we won't buy them.
re: 14
I'm sort of trying to do the same. I'm not entirely succeeding. I don't have the cash to go out and spend the sort of money that the most ethically and sustainably made clothes cost. But I do try more and more to buy less, and to buy better, where I can. I looked, just now, at the rating the brands I typically buy from have on various sites that rate brands for their sustainability, labour conditions and environmental impact, and they aren't the worst, but they also aren't that great, either.
All the cool people are buying hoodies from Senchi Designs and I don't even own a hoodie except for a thirty-year old one that says "Ohio State."
I am still too much of a consumerist - I like acquiring things - to go the high quality route. But if I'm thrifting old clothes, I don't feel quite as much guilt over the exploited workers and environmental woes of the fashion industry. Then the only constraining factors are my bulging closet.
A Senchi Designs hoodie can smush down to the size of an apple. And not a really big apple either.
A wool hoodie won't do that and also won't dry as quickly if it gets wet.
I've never heard of a Senchi Designs hoodie. I also didn't see snow this year, so I am probably not the target market.
The cool people go out into forests and mountains when it's cold.
When they're cool, they should wear a Senchi Designs hoodie.
And a layer to block the wind unless it is dead calm.
Cora Harrington, who used to run The Lingerie Addict blog, has done some amazing Twitter threads on this topic. My understanding from her work is that a human makes virtually any piece of clothing any of us are ever wearing. There is just too much variability (fabric texture, clothing cut, precision sewing tasks) for the automation to be possible.
What if we all went back to wearing robes?
What NW and Witt said. Sewing flat fabric pieces into three-dimensional garments is surprisingly tricky. Bras used to be more expensive when the cups were constructed of multiple pieces that had to be sewn together to form a three-dimensional shape. They're much cheaper now that they're made of polyurethane foam, which is injection-molded into a cup shape. Eventually we'll all wear neoprene bodysuits that can be directly shaped onto 3-D molds, and those of us who want a more retro look can pay a premium for artisanal sweatshop labor.
I guess that's why you don't see many stores offering codpieces.
Oh, there's a great informed blog about this by a woman who consults for clothing factories, but I can't find it.
Most clothing material is not just stretchy but anisometric -- different stretch along different axes. Even old fashioned wovens. Any garment more complicated than a pillowcase sews seams with stretch -- sometimes each side of the seam has different stretch at each point. This is hard enough for hands to get used to; robots are not good at it yet. If we wanted exactly the same clothes season after season, maybe we could develop machines to repeat one complicated seam, but that's not how we do.
There are machines for difficult but standardized and *stabilized* parts -- dress shirt cuffs, for instance. Fun YouTube rabbithole.
Oh, huh. I had wondered why molded foam bras had become dominant, because I hate them. Hadn't occurred to me that they're cheaper to make.
Molded foam bras are awful! Fortunately I had my breasts removed.
28 and 31: I am pretty oblivious to this trend and didn't realize that bras had gotten cheaper. I have a petite frame but large chest, somI stick with the few brands and styles that work, and they haven't changed and don't seem to be inexpensive.
My ugly compression sports bra is also not cheap. I'm guessing there's a lot of human labor involved in its production. While incredibly ugly and expensive ($80 now, up from $60) it allows me to participate in athletic activities comfortably.
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The MBTA has hired a new general manager who used to be in charge of the Long Island Railroad. Philip Eng. Do any New Yorkers know any5hing about his turn-around abilities? I guess LIRR was not great at one point.
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I thought foam bras were to hide nipples.
33 last: have you ever tried to turn a train around? NOT THAT EASY!
32: Area Woman with One Weird Trick to Disrupt the Bra Industry
Looks good, but I'll wait until Backpacking Light does a review.
28 It does seem like a variation on the 3D printer could someday be doing this. There's huge variation between individual humans, but a device that took a full body scan would seemingly have all the data needed to design and make clothes for that one person. Zipper in the back, single seam-less garment. Looser or tighter to order.
Zipper in the back, single seam-less garment.
No one wants to ask their coworker for help to use the office toilet. Clothing in the future will need to have a bum flap.
40: I dunno, I think that could only work with plastic-like materials, as noted above. Scuba suits, yes. Anything recognizable as woven or knitted fabric? Hard to imagine. But I'm not an engineer -- or a seamstress.
40: I dunno, I think that could only work with plastic-like materials, as noted above. Scuba suits, yes. Anything recognizable as woven or knitted fabric? Hard to imagine. But I'm not an engineer -- or a seamstress.
I remember that The Fabric Of Civilization talks about computer-aided 3D knitting in the final chapter, but I can't find references online.
43. Maybe instead of 3d printing fabric into a human clothing shape, textiles would be woven into large tubes (or spheres, if Charley insists on wearing a onesie) which could then be shrunken onto dressmaker dummies. Kind of the same principle by which Issey Miyake 3D Steam Stretch fabric is made.
I still think you'd get all the advantages of easy manufacturing plus easy voiding with something like the old monastic robes.
I mean, you'd hardly need restrooms in outdoor spaces.
I bet ChatGPT could learn to sew a bra. It might have three cups, though.
Are you sure I didn't get to the AI first?
41 This is one reason no one takes fashion design advice from me.
45 I'd definitely take a sphere.
So what I'm hearing here is that there's a huge demand for Thneeds.
51.2 Oh wait, I just realized that 45 could be construed to be a comment on body shape, which I didn't intend at all. I was picturing that you could take a sphere, shrink it onto a mannequin, and cut it at the neck and wrists and ankles to make a onesie. Trust me, it made sense until I thought it through.
Babies are often bald and, frankly, absurd looking.
Anyway, I recommend putting babies in sweat pants, especially after they start eating solid food, because they can shit like you wouldn't believe and you have a better chance at not having to figure out how to get them out of a be-shiited shirt if the shirt isn't attached to their pants.
We never had a girl and probably wouldn't have gone for super girly baby clothes anyway, but those baby tights with the butt ruffles are just absurd. Poop comes out of the sides a diapers so often. How do you even wash butt-ruffles?
That's all I remember about babies.
56. Seems like the obvious answer is to dress babies in monastic robes. They come with hoods, even.
2 is true but won't be for long. Quick google and it lokks like the ILO reckons 60-80% of clothing industry jobs in countries like Cambodia and Bangladesh could be automated by 2030
50: I'm just this guy, you know?