From Tradition to Contemporary Tailoring

Stitching Memories and Territories

Abstract

The article proposes a reflection on tailoring as a field of knowledge and identity production, investigating its transformations between tradition and contemporaneity. The research is grounded in the author’s personal experience as a tailor and artist, drawing a parallel between her professional practice in England — Savile Row — and in Brazil — Belo Horizonte — to examine how the gestures, techniques, and labor relations within this craft reveal historically consolidated dynamics of gender and power. The study addresses the participation of women in tailoring, highlighting how their presence and experiences have contributed to re-signifying modes of making, labor relations, and the imaginaries associated with the craft. In this sense, tailoring emerges as a space of encounter between manual practices and creative processes, where artisanal making assumes political, poetic, and affective dimensions, revealing transformative potentials in the present time.