Is there really so much talent around?

“A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist”

Artists are a rarity. Even good craftsman are hard to come by in a world of mass manufacturing.

Making friends with the sewing ladies gave me the opportunity to get to know the stories of each one of them, how some of them had been sewing all their lives, how they spent the early part of their career making a full garment.

I still do not doubt that their sewing skills, experience and passion are assets. But the changing economy has put them in a disadvantaged position. In the 80s, the sewing ladies were required to sew the whole garment. As the sewing industry evolved, scale, speed, productivity became the drivers of profitability. Many sewing tasks were de-skilled and broken down into smaller and simpler tasks. Specialization to achieve higher productivity also confined workers' skills to some parts of a garment.

By the 90s, the handful of sewing workers in Hong Kong were mostly confined to doing OPA (Outward Processing Arrangement), i.e. only parts of a garment e.g. the collars, shoulders and seams to qualify for tariff benefits. By the time we started taking orders, I realized that the skills of the sewing ladies at the social enterprise workshop had degenerated and it took a lot of effort, communication and motivation to help them revive their skills once again.