Everyone who has read The Three Musketeers remembers Aramis's intrigue with the mysterious “seamstress”, but not everyone wondered at the same time - who are these seamstresses? Meanwhile, the author of the book, Father Dumas, knew the women of this profession firsthand. From one of them, Dumas, a son, was born, who for many years suffered humiliation due to the fact that he was illegitimate.
The seamstress profession was born in France earlier than in Russia, and brought to society many not only craftswomen, but also courtesans.
Cheap manual labor
An honest seamstress was engaged in sewing fine linen and shirts for the rich monsieur, petticoats and dresses for ladies, and also decorated clothes with monograms and lace. She took measurements, cut and sewed it all on her hands. The work was painstaking and hard, and the seamstresses received little. At the end of the 17th century, they earned 14 sous per day. The bread was three sous, and the chicken was 15.
However, a pretty young seamstress always had a chance to improve the situation, because they took measurements from half-naked rich men, and some girls could not resist the temptation to become a kept woman. However, few of them became real courtesans, usually the case ended in illegitimate children, and even brothels. Only a few managed to break into the petty bourgeois and open their own shops and salons.
In Russia, seamstresses were in every noble family - they sewed underwear, dresses for young ladies, weaved lace, and embroidered. It became a separate profession in the 19th century, when serfs were given the opportunity to redeem their freedom. The sewing workshops were started by merchants' wives and French and German milliners who came from Europe. They sewed fashion news from European magazines and opened expensive shops.
For example, the poet's wife Natalya Pushkina sewed clothes and underwear for herself from madame Sichler (Tsichler), whose store was located on Bolshaya Morskaya Street. The poet had a hard time - in the account "from Zichler" there were sums up to 3364 rubles. Of course, madame herself was only a mistress - dozens of Russian seamstresses worked for her.
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The production of sewing machines, which opened in St. Petersburg in 1866, made the work of seamstresses easier and made it possible to increase the quality and productivity of labor. However, this did not affect earnings: at the end of the 1860s, a seamstress in Russia received 20 kopecks a day, and it cost only seven kopecks to sew one shirt! For comparison, already at the beginning of the 19th century, lunch in St. Petersburg cost about 20 kopecks. Most women had to dodge in every possible way to make ends meet.
There were not enough seamstresses in provincial cities. The entrepreneur Heinrich Peretz, who opened a workshop in Yekaterinburg in 1873, faced the lack of needlewomen and was forced to train qualified seamstresses himself.
In Russia, as well as in France, seamstresses often became prostitutes - yesterday's peasant serfs, accustomed to hard work, ended up in cities with their temptations. In pursuit of easy money, they ended up in brothels and never left them.
New time is an old profession
The revolution of 1917 gave a new life to the profession, after which dozens of emigrants - noblewomen and bourgeois, who found themselves penniless abroad, remembered about this craft. This was facilitated by the interest of foreigners in everything Russian, which arose after the revolution and war.
The most successful house in Paris was the “Kitmir” house, which belonged to Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, granddaughter of Alexander II. She mastered machine embroidery, taught three Russian women, met Gabrielle Chanel and intercepted an order for blouse embroidery. Kitmira's embroidery and sundresses were a success, and the pinnacle of the princess's career was the gold medal at the World Exhibition of Decorative Arts (1925).
The sewing workshops of emigrants from Russia were also opened in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.
The seamstress profession became very popular among young women during the NEP years, when small manufacturers were partially rehabilitated, providing city dwellers with fine linen.
However, already at this time in the USSR sewing artels and state enterprises began to appear, which quickly developed into sewing factories; sewing of underwear and shirts was put on stream, underwear began to be sewn "all over the country" and gradually seamstresses were no longer needed.
Alexander LAVRENTYEV
