STITCH IN TIME

Putting on my pants, one leg at time as is my custom, I instantly thought of Barthelemy Thimmonier.

You would have to be a designer, or historian of technology, to know why.

The reason is in the seams that held my pants, like all garments, together.  We can thank Thimmonier for that.  Without his design, only the rich would be able to wear clothes; the rest of us would simply be covering our nakedness. 

Although his name is no longer familiar, not a single stitch in the grand fabric of clothing and fashion design would be possible without Thimmonier, who was no clothes horse nor even a fashionista.  He never designed a dress or sketched an outfit.  Yet without his work, designers like Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan would be mere gluers of materials.

Thimmonier invented the sewing machine.

The idea of combining fabrics and skins through the use of stitching is ancient.  Needles with holes for thread made of mammoth ivory, reindeer bone, and walrus tusk have been found in Paleolithic caves.  It is even possible that our Neanderthal cousins knew a thing or two about sewing. 

These kinds of tools were significant because they made possible a new method of assembling clothing that went beyond the limitations of tying skins or felting fur.  But despite various improved techniques, hand stitching did not change for millennia until the early whispers of the Industrial Revolution and later, the first patent for a threaded needle to a German inventor named Charles Weisenthal in 1755.  This was intended to be a component in an automatic sewing device but the patent did not describe the rest of the machine.  The English inventor and cabinetmaker Thomas Saint was issued a patent for a complete machine for sewing in 1790 but it is not known if he actually built a working prototype.

A number of people in the early 1800s toyed with the idea of combining the eyed needle with some sort of wheel to automate the sewing process but none worked.  Then in the 1840s, French tailor Barthelemy Thimmonier designed the first working device.  His machine used only one thread and a hooked needle that made the same chain stitch used with embroidery.  It was not very efficient but it worked well enough to produce army clothing…until his workshop was wrecked by a mob and he narrowly escaped with his life. 

This kind of reaction was not unusual.  Almost every single machine designed to automate garment production has historically met with violent confrontation from workers fearing for their livelihoods.  The word Luddite as it refers to those who oppose technological change comes from the mobs who destroyed automatic sock-stitching machines in the 19th century.  Undaunted, Thimmonier continued to improve his device and was awarded patents in both England and America.  But resistance proved too great and Thimmonier never saw the success he sought.  He died in poverty in 1857. 

The goal of automated sewing did not, with the improvements of Elias Howe and Isaac Merritt Singer.  But it was Thimmonier’s design that first proved the possibility of automated sewing...to his detriment, to our eventual benefit.

Chain stitch, zig-zag pattern, electrified gizmo, and endless lawsuits and fortunes later, the sewing machine is one of the most familiar industrial products in the world and clothing manufacturing one of the world’s largest industries.

So the next time you dress for success, pay homage to one of the designers who made it all possible through the ultimate stitch in time.