ABSTRACT
This chapter uses a historical case study of custom dressmakers in the eighteenth to late nineteenth centuries to begin building an operating definition of “custom” and to provide a perspective on non-digital forms of custom production. It offers an account of a historical production process which managed to persist well into the Industrial Revolution and, for a time, to resist and even leverage the effects of that revolution. The chapter highlights the slow, uneven and contextually dependent trajectory towards standardization. It argues for the importance of considering the blurring of the distinctions between user and producer, and for the difference between custom production when one does it for oneself and custom production when the end user is not implicated in the production process. Moreover, this chapter opens a window onto one particular form of custom production, providing context and counterpoint for the forms of digitally aided custom production addressed in later chapters.
