Tailors and hosiery

What it is and technique

Making custom clothing (tailor) and leggings and stockings (calceter). In the villages, the pagès tailor sewed the peasant's festive dress; seamstresses and dressmakers made women's clothing. Technique: take measurements, cut on pattern and sew by hand.

Process step by step

1. Prendre measures the client.

2. Trace the pattern on the fabric with soap.

3. Carve with tailor's scissors.

4. Embark, try and sew.

5. Iron with a hot iron.

Forms and objects

• Pagès suit: see gipó and vestit de pagès , rebosillo and mocador .
• Escut del col·legi: two rampant lions holding tailor's scissors.

Vocabulary

• sastre / sastressa: someone who makes custom clothing.
• calceter: someone who makes hose and stockings.
• costurera: woman who sews.
• modista: someone who makes women's clothing.
• tisores de sastre: large scissors for cutting fabric.
• embastar: baste.
• didal: thimble.

Geography

• Palma: room in the Porteria de Sant Domingo (today Carrer del Palau Reial); burial of the col·legi in Sant Francesc.
• Inca (1566), and in the 17th Manacor, Llucmajor and Sóller.

Short story

• 1312: foundation of the college of tailors and hosiers in the church of Santa Margalida.
• 14th century: patron saints the Onze mil verges, festival with the seamstresses in El Carme.
• 1437: first known ordinances.
• 1445: new patron saint, Saint Francesc.
• 1566: own col·legi in Inca (Santa Llúcia, Sant Cosme i Sant Damià).

State

Minority. Registry of artisans (consultation 10/13/2026): 14 dressmaker registrations and 13 seamstress registrations in Mallorca; none of the tailors in the families consulted.

Why is it design

• Custom pattern: design for a specific body.
• The escut with scissors: the tool as an emblem.
• Base of the traditional dress that designers reinterpret today (see Pablo Erroz ).

For the project

• Gipó and vestit de pagès patterns with a registered dressmaker: open pattern file.

Sources

• ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sastre
• ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calceter
• dcvb.iec.cat/results.asp?Word=sastre
• caib.es/siciefront/artesania/index.jsp?idioma=ct

Working text from the Disseny Indígena knowledge base, machine-translated from Spanish.

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