Third-party manufacturing in Thessaloniki: working on your balcony

Working from a closed balcony or a home workshop (cottage industry) defined a whole era of mostly female labour in garment manufacturing. The photograph depicts a balcony at the rear of a building in a suburb of Thessaloniki which the house owner had converted into an informal garment manufacturing workshop. Working from home in clothes manufacturing was a common practice among women in Thessaloniki’s suburbs during the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s. Amidst the ‘diffused industrialisation of the city’, when workshops, manufacturing businesses and small mass production units were cropping up everywhere in Thessaloniki, women who had relevant skills and were in search of employment often offered their services to manufacturers from home, embroidering evening gowns, finishing garments, and ironing shirts.

The owner of the informal workshop depicted in the photograph was 60 years old when this interview was conducted. She discusses the reasons and circumstances that drove her to start working from home in this way.

‘I have worked from home, but it wasn’t for long. I made samples for a store in downtown Thessaloniki. I was tasked to make the samples that production was based on, that was it, just the samples. She [the employer] would cut the textile and give it to me to work into a garment, which I would then pass on to the other seamstresses so that it could go into production. At the time, I didn’t like this type of manufacturing, I was used to haute couture and had worked in upscale fashion studios. But it was a time when not only did I have to work, I had to do it from home. So, I made the samples and then my employer would hand them over to the seamstresses for mass manufacturing. 

Look, this type of manufacturing varies greatly. It’s one thing to make a sample and get 3,000 pieces out of it, another to get 30, 40 or 60 pieces. My employer would send the garments to Mykonos and the islands, ethereal pieces made of excellent fabrics. It wasn’t like the German [clothing factory] which would produce 50,000 pieces. I got into contract manufacturing when my son was little, because working from home was convenient then. But I couldn’t turn out 20 pieces a day, it was impossible. I had a family and that was my priority above all else. My house has a small balcony that I enclosed and that’s where I put my sewing machines and got to work. I still have the workshop. Now, I occasionally do orders, if a client asks. Most women don’t get their clothes custom-made anymore and I don’t have much time, but I wouldn’t want to let a client down’.