A fashion house in the historic centre of Thessaloniki

The extracts are from two interviews about one of the largest fashion houses in the historic centre of Thessaloniki, which operated from 1966-1967 until 1995. The interviewees are the son of the house’s owner and a woman who was an apprentice seamstress at the house in the 1960s. The two interviewees focus on the period between the ‘60s and the mid-‘80s when the owner of the fashion house was at the apex of her career. They describe a turning point for clothing trade and consumption in Greece when, after the trauma of the Second World War, both the production and sales of garments started rising, leading to a boom in demand for expensive and well-tailored clothes.

According to Potamianos, before the end of the 19^th century, when ready-made clothes were first imported from abroad and particularly from Vienna, high taxation had hindered wide consumption of such clothes and, in effect, prevented imported clothes from penetrating the Greek market. Besides, housewives covered the clothing needs of most families in Greece either by making the clothes themselves using their own sewing machines or by mending and modifying older clothes. As a result, garment construction became closely associated with working at home and from home.

According to the first interviewee, the son of the fashion house’s owner, his mother was introduced to the business by doing house visits for families in need of a new wardrobe after the war and until the 1960s. He reports that having clothes made to order was especially popular at the time, since the clothing retail market was mostly associated with clothes perceived as being of poor quality compared to the clothes tailored by the so-called ‘good seamstresses’.

After the Second World War, a historic shift occurred and what was described as ‘diffused industrialisation’ took hold in Northern Greece and especially in the wider area of Thessaloniki. This development was inextricably linked with the mass movement of populations from villages to urban centres. Tailoring was an important source of income for many young women who had just arrived in the city from rural parts of Greece. Especially in the large urban centres, the interest both in ready-made and custom-made clothes gradually grew over the 1950s and ‘60s. At the same time, an entire ecosystem of information around fabric cutting, sewing, and embroidering emerged through publications which introduced their readers to the latest trends in international fashion and offered garment patterns and tailoring instructions.

Soon, some seamstresses, like Th., became major artistic figures, producing couture garments using expensive, quality fabrics and raw materials, while others kept turning out orders working mainly from home. Simultaneously, there was a gradual rise in the number of women employed in the mass production of clothing both in manufacturing units and as third-party contractors from home.

The  two interviewees describe the trajectory of this trend in the sector when discussing how Th., the owner of the fashion house, diversified beyond custom-made clothes by opening her own line of boutiques/ateliers in Thessaloniki, as well as a wholesale store in Athens a little later. However, the commercial and financial expansion of the Greek clothing manufacturing sector was severely impeded by changes in the country’s tariff policy in the 1980s and the emergence of large clothing store chains shortly after. After 1989, the sector was also hit by the import of garments produced in foreign countries at a much lower cost. This is roughly the time when the fashion house in question also suspended its operations after the death of its owner.