The Revival of Yarn Crafts
Most people can think of at least one skill, book, or hobby that they say “Oh! Only if I had more time…”. For a surprising amount of Millennials and Gen Z’ers, that skill was a yarn craft. Pre-pandemic knitted garments were already making a comeback, but as the world retreated indoors the trend sky-rocketed and millions of Americans took to making their own.
If you have browsed through a Tiktok “for you page” or swiped through instagram reels anytime in the last year, you have probably come across at least one video of a young woman standing in front of a large canvas with a clunky metal contraption in her hand. If you stuck out those fifteen to sixty seconds, you learned that she was making either a rug or a yarn ornamented mirror and that clunky mechanism in her hand was a punch-needle or yarn gun. Alternatively, you likely have a friend who suddenly crocheted a blanket, knit half a sweater, or started making long complicated wall hangings. The point being, what was once a type of craft only older women or textile artists got enthusiastic about has made a complete comeback. Chances are everyone now knows someone who learned to knit, crochet, macrame, weave, or punch-needle during their quarantine.
A little over a century ago a similar event occurred just after the Spanish Flu pandemic and leading into the Great Depression. There was a dramatic turn in fashion to more androgenous garments that could be constructed at home by even the most novice sewer, including a style making a comeback this year, the long shift dress (a.k.a. the right dress to take you back in time). This was known as the democratization of fashion. Suddenly, people of all socio-economic classes had the ability to be “in style”. Fashion was back in the hands of the people. It seems this has happened again, but this time with the knit garment not the androgynous silhouette. It also comes at a time where there is an abundance of small crafting businesses (largely fueled by Tiktok fame) adding to the already densely populated fashion market. It is easier than ever to shop small, but will we?
At the moment the fashion world seems undecided on whether comfort is here to stay or if the next few seasons of fashion will be the wildest yet. If comfort and the crafted-at-home look drop out of style quickly, many - if not most - of those new small businesses will disappear as swiftly as they came into existence. The power will fall back out of the hands of the consumer just as it did following the Great Depression. Will history repeat itself?
Or is this the decade that changes fashion?
