When we talk about the industrial revolution, we think about the period of history which has affect on the society, politically and economic side. Meanwhile, in fashion industry the industrial revolution had affect in fabrics and materials that we used to make clothes. In England, at that time the main fabrics were wool and then cotton. Also, the society had a desire to be different from each other, in additional, people could pretend to be upper class.
In the early industrial revolution , in 1764 was invented the SPINNING JENNY by James Hargreaves. The spinning jenny was a machine which they used a large wheel to spin many spindles of thread at once. It was used for the cotton which means that workers had more and better clothing, as that type of textile (cotton) led more demand. Thanks for this innovation, it increased the production of the ability of textile manufactures. The impact on the environment was indirect, therefore, the spinning jenny could spin thread into the yarn much faster than a person.
Hargreaves sold his creation to certain foundry in the area, which he made little money from it. Furthermore, from his innovation other creations who built get inspired by him.
In 1850 Isaac Merritt Singer created the first practical SINGER sewing machine was named as Standard 1, a first straight stitch sewing machine at a small machine shop in Boston. When he invented the first sewing machine he made official of the beginning the brand SINGER, which with time became very famous in the world. There was a huge difference between sewing with machine and doing by hand, it took 14 hours to sew a man’s shirt by hand, meanwhile, it took 1 hour and 16 minutes with a Singer machine. Therefore, in 1860, 400 Singer machines were able to do any piece of work that may be done by two thousand workers. In 1863, the brand started to sell 20.000 sewing machines on annual basis and in 1867 the sewing machines were started to be manufactured in Glasgow, Scotland.
During the industrial revolution the society were became Capitalism. It was very important and the reason is during this period, the industrialisation was required significant work and investment from individuals and not necessarily from the government. It was focused more on the economic side, we can say there was an economic revolution as well, even though it tend to benefit more levels of society rather than just the aristocratic. In my opinion, the capitalism benefits more the differences of the socials class. Because with the capitalism it increase with a surplus of affordable products being mass-produced, which nowadays inside the fashion industry we called FAST-FASHION.
In these days, I describe Fast Fashion as economical, fashionable and mass-produced clothing but it affect on the environment. Inside the industry produces 10% of global carbon dioxide emissions every year and there is an estimation to use around 1.5 trillion litres of water annually. Furthermore, it concerns to been rising pollution from chemical waste to microplastics. Let's put the problems in one side for a moment, even though in fast fashion industry the clothes are very cheap, it is procured a rapid trends change, for example Shein. Dr Patsy Perry's team mention the global nature of the fashion industry means clothes travelled around the world several time in course of the manufacture. Also, mention about the industry's water consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, textile waste and use of chemicals- substances they not only risk the environment but also the health risks for who are involved in the industry. The team wrote 'In one example, a single European textile -finishing company uses over 466g of chemicals per kilogram of textile'. Most of the manufacture fabric are not in US or EU but they are situated in developing countries.
The social class during the industrial revolution, change which means there is a formation of MIDDLE CLASS and began to raise people from lower class to middle class. Therefore, in the political side the capitalism encourage an individual liberty, an economist Milton Friedman wrote in Capitalism and Freedom in 1962 ‘ capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom’.
One of the negative side during the Capitalism and the industrial revolution , is there were unemployed people. It came a point where workers are left out of the fabrics. Which creates a strong struggle for the people, they used to fight for better conditions, because of it there was a social inequalities.
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