5 Ways Sex Work Shows Up in Fashion History: May 28, 2024

It’s Day 29 of my Spring Challenge!

As a reminder, this challenge means that either you get an email in your inbox 5 times per week until May 31st (which means I get a set of luxurious, vintage jammies) OR I have to donate $5 to a charity I hate for every week that I miss the goal.

Series #5: 5 Ways Sex Work Shows Up in Fashion History

Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens Season 2 cracked up viewers with a scene in which, unable to use foul language, a madame at a brothel finds herself unable to explain what she does at work.

Finally, in desperation, she uses the term “seamstress” to explain her job, with young ladies at her establishment “mending shirts”, “darning socks”, and even…”sewing on a button” (although that’s extra).

It’s a funny scene, but it gets a little less funny when you realize the historical roots of the scene - and its present reality.

Warning: this issue contains discussion of suicide and sex work. I am aware these are painful topics for many. Please keep yourself and your health first and do not read this if it may hurt you.

Today’s Pick: Sex Workers and the Clothes They Make

London police in Victorian England recorded 8,600 women sex workers in London. However, the actual number may be higher, going up to 80,000.

This is partially because sex work was a seasonal job for a section of the population in particular: seamstresses.

Seamstresses are women whose job is sewing, especially clothes. In London, the demand for their services ebbed and flowed through the year.

In certain months, when the aristocracy/Ton was in town (Bridgerton viewers, I see you!), seamstresses could expect to have regular work as people required alterations, new clothes, and accessories.

However, when the aristocracy was in the countryside, work dried up. There were too many seamstresses and not enough work to go around, not to mention how underpaid and overworked they were. To supplement their income and stave off starvation, several seamstresses turned to sex work for the rest of the year.

Louisa May Alcott, the popular author of “Little Women”, brings this up in another work, “An Old-Fashioned Girl”. While Alcott is normally associated with being saccharine-sweet, her books are often rather dark, discussing adult themes subtly.

One of the characters in Old Fashioned Girl, a seamstress, is introduced just after she has attempted suicide due to a lack of work. Alcott hints at what her other options are and it is a theme across several of her other books as well: what are the options for women working 12+ hour days for a pittance?

And Alcott wasn’t the only author to write about this. The relationship between working girls and sex work was well-known enough to be written about by several other authors, such as Dickens and Carlyle, and in much blunter language.

All the beautiful fashions of yesteryear we sigh over, all the trends that have come and gone can be attributed back to sex work - which kept our seamstresses alive.

What Happens Today

The relationship between seamstress and sex worker has not ended. In 2014, VICE News released a video on Cambodia’s anti-trafficking campaign. Former sex workers were given new jobs as seamstresses to create clothes for Western brands.

They said they preferred the sex work.

The clothes we wear today are most likely made by these women or women who are extremely similar: working in back-breaking conditions for 12+ hours a day for almost nothing and either just coming out of sex work, or continuing in it to make ends meet.

The proliferation of clothes we have today doesn’t fall from the sky.

They are crafted - somebody is sitting at that sewing machine, somebody is cutting pieces, somebody is marking those darts that give our clothes a good fit. And these somebodies are usually women.

Today, as it was then, fashion is a feminist issue. From the cotton we plant to the final styling of our outfits, every step comes from the labor and unfair exploitation of women.

So, it’s time to ask ourselves: How different are we from 1815 aristocrats, really?

Subscribe to receive insider info on hidden gems that will make you look good and feel great.

Want to chat about fashion/history/literally anything else? Here’s my Calendly!

xoxo,

Simran