A Guest Rant on "Why Are Vintage Patterns So Expensive?"

I got this great "guest rant" from a pattern seller (who will remain anonymous) and I thought it was worth posting.

[Although] I will note that no one's raised the issue of "How much did they pay people for the valuable vintage they are offering us" or "I bet they paid $5.00 for 20 patterns, how can they charge us $15.00 each for them??" (or significantly more, in some cases).

[It's] a very valid point and I don't want to ruin your comment section by addressing it ... I have a good answer for how and why I price my offerings:

Yes I often buy boxes of old patterns for very little cost for the box. But I got up at 4:00AM to be first in line at the estate sale that I thought might possibly have vintage patterns. I stood in line for 2 hours and tried to be first in the door. When I got in the door I started pushing past people and heading for the garage or shed where the patterns usually are and lo and behold there are 2 boxes, rat pellets, roach carcasses and all ...

I make my best deal and tote the smelly mess to my car. When I get them home I sit down and go through them to see if there are any beautiful finds that need my immediate attention. I sort by priority which goes first and which gets stored for another day. Then I start with the high priority ones and spread out and check to make sure all the pieces are there and cry when they aren't. I remove old pins (usually unless I miss one), I iron the envelope and the instructions so they are nice and readable.

Then I scan (or rather the DH scans) the envelope and sends it to me. I size it and clarify it a bit so it is readable. If I'm feeling creative I "clean" the front just for my files and cause I like 'em that way. Then it's time to write the listing. Gotta hold that pattern so I know the proper size and measurements ... 'cause they're mostly different through the years.

Then I package the little beauty in a plastic bag and file it away until it goes to its new owner ... by this time I've spent an average of 1-2 manhours, gasoline (at $4 a gallon) and we don't even count the time spent in line at the estate sale ...

Now it's listing time ... we all know that eBay doesn't do anything for free (and even website space costs) so I've got 1-2 hours time, a plastic bag, gas money, and then we add FEES. Take away everything else and the fees alone eat into the profit. If I manage to get $9.99 for a pattern and it better be a special one ... I get to put $8.00 of that in my pocket. Take away a few cents for packaging and equipment (scanner, computer, iron) maintenance and we're down to $7.50 ... O yeah, the 25 cents I paid for the pattern ... we're at $7.25. IF THE PATTERN SELLS! Considering the 1-2 manhours involved ... That's below minimum wage.

I thought this was worth posting because so many of us forget about the overhead and just plain TIME that's involved in running a small business, especially when you're doing everything yourself (or with the help of your spouse, who may or may not have another full-time job). Sure, I hear people say "I could buy that at the Salvation Army for a dollar," but I always want to ask them "Really? That exact pattern? You're sure it's there? When do they close, by the way?"

You're really paying for everything above, plus the luxury of choice -- being able to select from the range of patterns in the seller's web store. And (at least for my advertisers) reassurance that all the pieces are there, and a good chance of a refund if they're not (try that with the Salvation Army ...).

One last thing: if you do think vintage patterns are too expensive, you have a lot of options. You can not buy them, for one. Modern patterns are much, much cheaper (if you wait for the $1.99 pattern sales at the major fabric chains). You can set up a wait-for-it search on eBay and hope someone who doesn't know what they have will list it. And, of course, you can always draft your own.

That pattern up above? It's $75 (at The Blue Gardenia, sorry, there's not direct link to the pattern page). Unused, an in-demand bust size, a fancy pattern, and a great illustration. Is it worth $75? It is to somebody!

A Rejoinder and Statement of Principles

I don't usually take the time to reply to negative comments that are left on this blog -- why encourage people who are spoiling for a fight? I'm not bothered by their criticism, for the most part (and if it's justified I do try to take it to heart, however unpleasant it may be to do so!). But most of the time replying to negative comments falls under the heading "Never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty and only the pig enjoys it."

However, there have been a few comments on a recent post which I feel I need to respond to, if only for clarification. A commenter, mainly anonymous, but also signing one comment "7/10 split", suggested that I am a "professional what? writer/ advertisers? whose goal is to sell things", and also a "shill."

For the record: I am not a "professional advertiser". I am a writer, but of a very particular kind.

The same commenter (who may be this blogger) also suggested that I don't sew the dresses that I post here. If you would like to see pictures of ME in the dresses I have sewn (and I admit, I don't often post pictures of myself here because, all things considered, I had a better time in labor -- and I didn't have an epidural! -- than I do having my picture taken) you can see them in five out of the first six pictures here.
(The dresses shown in that link include a Duro, the pink jellybean dress, the blogiversary dress, the stunt Valentine's Dress, and the yellow-bird dress.)

Whether you enjoy my posts or not, I would like to state unequivocally that I do NOT accept money to post about any particular dress, fabric, pattern, pair of shoes, etc. There is NO payola or kickback scheme in effect on this blog.

For book reviews, I am, as is common practice in publishing, often provided with free copies of the book in question, to review or to give away.

The advertisers on the right-hand side are just that: advertisers. They have no influence on content, and I do *not* ask them for free stuff.

I accept pictorial ads ONLY from people who sell patterns, fabric, or vintage clothes, or are otherwise related to sewing. I must approve the ad before it will run. My ad rates are very low; $25/month (with a minimum three-month commitment, because I'm lazy and don't want to be bothered putting up and taking down ads all the time). I also participate in Google's AdSense program, which are the boxed text ads you see on the page, and in the Amazon Associates program, which gives me a commission on books purchased by Amazon customers who clicked on links to books from this blog. (To give you an idea of the revenue from those two sources; my last "payment" from Amazon was a $35 gift certificate which I used ... to buy more sewing books. Google pays every two months or so; I think my last check from them was in the $125 range.)

I have set up "Dress a Day Inc" as a LLC company, so that, if I say something libelous and am sued, the company will be the target of any lawsuit (and not my family). This means I file taxes on all the income from this blog -- if there is any, after paying hosting fees to my internet service provider.

As for the comments about the sweater in question, I am doing a little research on the subject; the commenter suggested that the sweater probably cost less than $1 to make, and that all the labor involved was sweatshop labor in Asia. I don't think that's right, given that the cost of a pound of even low-grade cotton is about .71¢ -- that's a pound of unspun cotton. From what I can tell, the spinning of one pound of raw cotton fiber produces 840 yards of yarn. That seems to be on the low end of the number of yards you'd need for a sweater -- any knitters want to jump in here? -- and the sweater I posted about was 14 gauge, which is a fairly fine knit). So, at least .71¢ in raw materials, plus the spinning cost, plus the fashioning cost, plus the cost of the buttons -- I think it would be hard to get the raw goods cost of this garment under $1. Even leaving aside that the garment is made in China (I called and asked) -- there's the cost of the coming up with the design, a job almost certainly done by an American at American wages. (J.Crew employs about 7600 people.) The same commenter said that the sweater I linked to could be found in discount stores for under $20; if, in fact, that is the case -- why haven't I found it there? It's not like I haven't been looking! Do you factor the salary of the designer into the cost of the sweater? If not, why not? Do you factor in the jobs of the catalog writers (Americans), shop employees (American and for the stores in Japan, Japanese)? The distribution center employees (in Virginia and North Carolina)? The UPS guy who will bring it to me? (Hi Luis!) The short answer, it seems to me, is that a narrow focus on manufacturing jobs is not helpful; if the company can't manufacture goods at a reasonable price, then all those other jobs I mentioned above -- they go away, too. Despite conjecture about how much of the price of the sweater is pure profit, large retail chains have VERY small profit margins -- one source puts it at 2%. Another source (from 1998!) puts the apparel profit margin at 5.4% ... and given the rising costs of commodities since 1998, I can't imagine that margin has gone up.

I apologize for such a long and tedious post, without even any pretty pictures to enliven it; I promise not to make a habit of this kind of thing. However, I do treasure the trust you place in me by visiting this blog, leaving comments, and contributing to a little oasis of dress-loving camaraderie online, and I didn't want to give credence to accusations of shilling, payola, and "blogging under false pretenses" by letting them go by in silence.

(Comments of the kind "all her taste is in her mouth," "this is soooooo ugly lol", and "i cant believe u wear this!" will still be ignored. De gustibus, etc.)

If you ever have any questions about me or this blog, well, my email address is on the right-hand side, towards the bottom. I do try to answer all the email I receive.

I Just Don't Know

I've had this site, OurThreads.com, open in my browser for a week, trying to decide whether to blog about it.

The pros:

• it's a site that promotes swapping of clothes as well as buying/selling


• it lets users donate the money they make from their closets to the charitable cause of their choice


• the interface looks pretty nice

The cons:

• sites like this are only as good as their user base, and their user base right now (although they all seem like very nice people!) isn't very large


• it's only slightly less trouble to take pictures and list items on a site like this as it is for eBay, and eBay would probably net you more money


• there were only 19 dresses listed when I last checked.

Anyway, I'm not sold yet. I think what would really make this site work is a something like Amazon's "Resell Your Books" feature. Sign up a few big online clothing retailers (GAP.com, Amazon, Bluefly, Overstock.com, Zappos, etc.), and get them to let OurThreads.com users upload their purchase histories. Match people who have similar sizes/purchase histories, and then alert them to each other and see if they want to trade.

They could also let you (with a widget/bookmarklet) "shop" on other, non-partner sites and mark things you've bought, which would add that thing automatically to your "closet".

For every person who says "eeeew ... used clothes?" there will be two who will buy that extra sweater if they know they can sell or swap it in a few months for something new-to-them.

Having people upload their own stuff is so old-web, and too much work. Make it passive, or nearly passive, and you're more than halfway there. A really useful site would know/figure out (with my permission) what I've already bought, and then would ping me when people who have similar tastes mark the stuff THEY already bought with a "willing to trade/sell" marker.

So I pose the questions to you, my dear readers. Would you use a site like OurThreads.com, as it is now? Would you take pictures of your stuff, describe it, put it up on this site, and then field requests to trade a pair of barely-worn GAP grass-green ballet flats for your barely-worn grass-green cardigan? (Not that I have a pair of shoes like that gathering dust in MY closet ...) I'm not sure I would. But I'd sign up for a passive, automatic-info-gathering clothing-swap site in a heartbeat ...

(And while I'm talking about advances in shopping tech -- someone has finally implemented my dream of a shop-by-color application. It's here at Yahoo! Shopping. Of course, in my dream it was by Pantone, but hey. You take what you can get. Now do you see why my pitch for a shopping-by-color service got third place in the Web 1.0 pitch contest at Wikimania 2006? Vindication is suh-weet.)

COMING SOON: A Dress A Day T-SHIRTS!

Thanks to Melanie at A Cluster of Parrots, who designed the logo! (Melanie's baby onesies with the bow ties? My *favorite* baby presents.)

Here's the deal:

• They're American Apparel tees (which means they come in AA sizes, see poll below)


• They're pink with brown ink. We'll do other colors later, I bet. Leave a comment if you have suggestions.


• The logo will be smallish (about palm-size) and centered on the front of the shirt, on the upper sternum, for fewer bustage-stretchage issues.


• They'll come right from Melanie, who is lovely to deal with. (As much as I love CafePress, I wanted the Dress A Day t-shirts to be crafty and hand-done and from a small, mom-run business ... it just seemed appropriate. I may still use CafePress for tote bags and postcards and whatnot; tell me what you want in the comments!)


• Cost: $15, plus $4.60 priority mail shipping (in US). (International Shipping will be extra, depending on where you are and how fast you want your shirt.)

Please take our size poll so that I know what sizes to order! The poll will be up for a week or so; Monday I'll put it in the sidebar or something. Then I'll put up the link for ordering after we know what sizes people want.



I know there's lots we haven't answered, like whether we'll do men's sizes, and when exactly you'll be able to order them, and so forth, so go ahead and leave comments and I'll try to answer them as best I can, although you should expect a lot of "I don't knows" and "Let me look into thats".