It was in the Italian café that James slid a tin box of something across the table to Helen—“No, no, I couldn’t”—but later, she accepted, realizing how expensive they must’ve been and fearing that he might think her ungrateful.

“B–besides,” she said, her head lowered, “colored pencils will be nice for a change. Thank you.”

“Anything to help,” he said.

And truly, she was becoming a project of his, someone real to help...passing the alms directly instead of dropping them into a church basket.

A few hot meals and movies and art materials. James had little else to spend his money on besides repairs on the old Packard.

And Cassandra always charmed her father whenever she wanted to buy something very nice.

Helen worked part-time as a seamstress for a dry cleaner and she often took smaller jobs laundering and ironing at private residences, so the films they saw and the things he bought her, where they ate and what money he spent, even a little, meant a great deal to her.

Last fall, I published a novella called Little Papers, a bittersweet romance about an upper-class young man, James Emory, who falls in love with his family’s occasional domestic help, Helen Smith.

Set in postwar Boston, Little Papers depicts a city divided by class, ethnic, and religious differences.

What ultimately draws James and Helen together isn’t instant attraction but a shared interest in the arts.

Besides her love of film and demonstrating a real talent for the visual arts, Helen also regularly works as a seamstress at a dry cleaner’s. This was apart from her occasional role as a maid at the Emory’s townhouse in the illustrious Louisburg Square in Beacon Hill.

In 1948, the year in which this novella is (mostly) set, Boston still had an active garment trade in its downtown and Chinatown areas.

Though not employed by a factory, Helen, like more traditional garment industry workers, was paid a low wage.

Perhaps more functional than artistic, her job as a seamstress conveys the low value placed on essential labor, then and even now.

According to a 1950s study conducted by Albert Anthony Tappé, Boston’s garment industry (per annum)

But the garment industry’s persistent low wage problem (amongst many other concerns such as employee safety and environmental impact), didn’t go away once it left urban American cities and touched foreign soil.

Today, as the largest clothing manufacturing country, China produces about a third of the world’s garments. Yet, depending on the region, the wages of garment workers remain low relative to the cost of living.

Fashion Dive had a report that came out a couple years ago, revealing how workers in Shein factories earn only between $800 and $1300 a month for working twelve hours a day, six or seven days a week.

With that said, of course there’s the sticky dilemma of workers needing the industry in order to make a very modest living and the manufacturers being the lifeline that provide it. For this, there’s limited incentive to change the status quo of low pay and long hours.

This reality raises another longer-term question: what will happen to workers when new technology changes how clothes are made?

Not so very long ago, machines in the Industrial Age revolutionized the way the garment industry operated. More than two centuries later, another revolution may be emerging.

Unlike a traditional loom, which weaves fabric that are then used to make clothes, a 3D loom is an automated manufacturing machine that cuts out middle processes and creates nearly finished whole garments in one go.

This type of technology can also create customized apparel based on body scans.

According to their website, Unspun’s Vega loom

weaves the yarns into three-dimensional, circular shapes that can create different sizes and shapes in 3 dimensions.

Unspun has sold limited edition apparel on its website and in 2023, Eckhaus Latta collaborated with the company to create a collection for New York Fashion Week.

The 3D weaving loom can create clothing without any seams (if that’s your thing) and though I’m not crazy about the particular styles of pants shown below, the technology seems versatile, and just like a traditional loom, it isn’t limited to a certain kind of fabric either.

I like Unspun’s own limited editions a bit better

Recently, the company reported that major brands like Walmart and REI have shown support for its plans to build automated manufacturing hubs or “microfactories” in the United States.

Though acting primarily as an environmentally-conscious solution for manufacturers, I have to wonder, if technology like this takes off here and overseas, what will happen to the millions who depend on the garment industry for work?

In 2017, Chinese manufacturer Tianyuan Garments Company partnered with US-based SoftWear Automation to test “sewbots” in a pilot factory in America.

In 2024, Walmart worked with Unspun to produce men’s chinos (and I’ve already mentioned Unspun’s collaboration with Eckhaus Latta.)

If automated textile technology continues to improve, overcome production limitations, and reduce in cost, more and more mass-producing manufacturers will likely adopt it.

Done on a larger scale, this could cause a shift in employees’ responsibilities from garment production to roles like machine maintenance, finishing, or quality control. Expertise in a particular area might warrant higher wages and since the machines do most of the work, less hours might be required of employees.

On the other hand, the number of staff needed for such roles would be far less than in traditional manufacturing, leaving a large portion of garment workers out of jobs.

Of course, this is speculation for now.

I imagine eighty or so years ago everyday people like Helen in Little Papers would’ve scoffed at even the notion of such technology, dismissing it as sci-fi level nonsense—machines advanced enough to sew whole garments without the delicate and precise skills of a human? Yeah right.

But as textile technology continues to develop, it leaves me wondering about the future of what we wear and who—or what—will be making them.