Swiss Embroidery
Hey, Melissa asked:
The invention of embroidery machines in the 1820s and 1830s brought a golden age to St Gallen. A few decades later, the region boasted some 100,000 machines, with production still centred in the home. By 1913, embroidery was Switzerland’s largest export industry, with St Gallen accounting for around half of the entire world production of textiles. These days, that figure is down to just 0.5 percent, but Swiss embroidery remains a highly valued, luxury commodity and production continues in the hands of small, highly specialized companies that supply designs and finished products to haute couture fashion houses: Lacoste’s famous crocodile logo, for instance, is Swiss embroidered. St Gallen’s now almost entirely computerized embroidery industry still relies on some two thousand local women working from home on fine hand-sewn detailing impossible to achieve by machine.
The invention of embroidery machines in the 1820s and 1830s brought a golden age to St Gallen. A few decades later, the region boasted some 100,000 machines, with production still centred in the home. By 1913, embroidery was Switzerland’s largest export industry, with St Gallen accounting for around half of the entire world production of textiles. These days, that figure is down to just 0.5 percent, but Swiss embroidery remains a highly valued, luxury commodity and production continues in the hands of small, highly specialized companies that supply designs and finished products to haute couture fashion houses: Lacoste’s famous crocodile logo, for instance, is Swiss embroidered. St Gallen’s now almost entirely computerized embroidery industry still relies on some two thousand local women working from home on fine hand-sewn detailing impossible to achieve by machine.
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