Asia,  Storytime,  TDM,  Travel Journal,  Vietnam

[story time] My Experience as an Apprentice Seamstress in Vietnam

Today, we continue the series [story time]. In the previous episode, I was on an exchange semester in Australia, in Sydney in 2009. At the end of this semester, I could no longer stay in Australia, not having found a job, nor could I return to France (no longer having a visa).

So I went back to Vietnam in 2010, at my parents’ home in Hà Nội. Completely confused, not knowing what to do with my life.

A Vietnamese girlfriend was in the same case as me, she who dreamed of becoming a fashion designer. And for that, she wanted to take sewing classes first and suggested that I go too.

The training lasted a minimum of 3 months, 4 hours a day from 8am to 12pm. It was a training for professionals, but you could go as an individual. Having always wanted to learn how to sew, I said yes right away, it would keep me busy and make me happy.


On the registration date, I show up at the learning center to register and my girlfriend… isn’t even there. She stood me up.

I am still registering. This center also offers cooking classes and floral arrangement classes. At the end of the course, if the students feel capable, it is quite possible to take an exam to get a certificate. Contrary to the CAP, here everyone can take classes, but the minimum requirement is to be able to read and write.

So for the first time in my life, I find myself in class with girls from a different social background than me, most of whom come from the countryside. They are in Hanoi because they have family (far away) and they all have a dream: to become seamstresses.

There are three of us who are complete beginners, and in the class there are about twenty industrial machines. Only the machine is supplied, we have to buy the rest. The other girls started the class long before me, so we are here with completely different levels and the teacher circulates between the machines to show us how to do it, but especially to yell at us because we are too bad 😀

Classes : The 1st week

During the very first week, the teacher gives me A4 documents and I have to copy by hand these documents which contain the rules of industrial sewing: i.e. if the thread is cut during sewing, where I have to start again. If I finish a seam, on how many centimeters I have to make the stop stitch. I also have to learn the rules for sewing shirt pockets and zippers.

It is also necessary to copy the sheet concerning all the technical problems that can be encountered with a machine and the proposed solutions. It is of course forbidden to photocopy this sheet because according to the teacher, it fits better in the head when you copy by hand.

I am not interested in the exam to become a professional seamstress, but the teacher forces me to follow the process anyway. And frankly, thanks to these long hours spent copying the rules, when I look at the seams of a garment, I know all the rules that the seamstresses had to follow in order for the clothes to be accepted and exported to Europe.

Then, I am allowed a stack of thick sheets and I have to “sew” straight lines on them, without thread, for several days. 4 hours a day.

The 2nd week

After a week, the new students and I are very close to quitting, and that’s when the teacher finally allows us to thread the threads, adjust the thread tension (I used to break a lot of threads at first) and make straight lines, then curved lines on fabric. Of course, the fees we pay at school are really ridiculous so as soon as we break a needle (on an industrial machine too – you have to be clumsy), we get yelled at and I don’t dare to break any more 😀

I’m so happy to know how to do straight lines properly that I continue the work at home as well lol. My uncle still has an old machine sleeping in his garage and it was quickly taken out, tested and used. At the end of the 2nd week, I start to make some small bags…

one of my first bags

From the 3rd week

During 2 weeks, we learn how to make pockets: shirt pockets, back trouser pockets, front pockets, pockets with lapels, pockets without lapels… on different fabrics.

Striped and patterned fabrics are really the most difficult and you learn that not only is it hard to cut the pocket to match the pattern with the back fabric, but if I’m not careful, the fabric will move and everything is crooked. My teacher never allows me to throw away the fabrics (which I bought as an extra), we had to cut the threads one by one because she thinks it will encourage us not to make the same mistakes again.

At the end of these 2 weeks unbearable to make only pockets, we finally have the right to learn how to make zippers. What a nightmare! Zippers for pants, but also invisible zippers for dresses.

And when the teacher feels that we are on the verge of suicide, she finally allows us to make pants. It’s the easiest clothes to make.

Contrary to the ready-made patterns we see in France, we have to learn how to draw our own pattern right away. There are ready-made formulas, so depending on the measurements, we can create a personalized pattern. Of course, the drawing of the first patterns is only done on paper, corrected many times by the teacher. And after 10 drawings with fictitious measurements, we have the right to draw it directly on the fabric, cut it and sew our first pants.

We’ll have to make 3 of them like this, with different types of pockets, high sizes, low sizes…

Then we move on to the passes.

The collar of the shirt remains for me my worst nightmare. I never managed to make a single symmetrical shirt collar.

As with the pants, we learn how to draw the pattern first, then we learn how to sew a real shirt. There are a lot of details to bring, at the level of the sleeves, the buttons, the pocket… and I systematically miss the collar. I have never succeeded in making a single shirt that the 3 months of courses are already over. For personal reasons, I stop there, but very happy to have known the basic rules.

Other apprentice seamstresses

Spending 4 hours a day with the other apprentice seamstresses creates bonds. We see through the fabrics chosen by the girls, their personality and style.

I once broke the thread on a serger and had to ask a girl to help me get it back. It’s a difficult task that takes her 30 minutes. The next day, I offered her dried plums as a thank you, which cost nothing at all and her reaction (much too positive) touched me very much. She seems to be unaccustomed to receiving gifts and she thanked me all day long.

I am so ashamed to be so privileged and still feel lost and confused. I have so many more choices than these girls, so many more opportunities and here I am complaining because I don’t know what to do with my life.

I befriended a girl with whom the current is flowing well. She has been in the class for over a year. I know she is experienced just by the sound of her sewing machine. While the other girls have more indecisive gestures, she has almost professional gestures. She tells me that she is almost ready to take the exam, which is to make a man’s shirt . The fabric (completely white, easier) will already be pre-cut and she will only have to assemble everything in a set time (3 hours I think).

The specifications are already clearly defined in the documents that I had to copy by hand at the beginning of the course, so I know that there are a lot of points to respect and that it isn’t an easy exercise. If she passes this exam (and the written exam), she will have a small certificate and will be able to apply to work in a factory.

The students and the teacher talk a lot about career opportunities and choices for girls. In Vietnam, many people use seamstresses (instead of going to ready-to-wear stores) so if they do well, they will make a good living. They will be able to open their own workshop. Customers will come with their own fabrics, especially as the Vietnamese New Year approaches, and with each change of season.

At the time, I used a seamstress for normal clothes (delivery time 1 month), and a seamstress specialized in delicate fabrics such as silk or chiffon (delivery time 2 weeks).

My teacher also had a small workshop of this type but she had so many clients that she simply stopped to devote herself to her family. So she opted for a small salary as a teacher. To make ends meet, she also participates in exams (cutting fabrics for the candidates and marking them).

However, the salary will be higher if the seamstresses manage to integrate a factory. Factories that make clothes for export for international brands such as Mango, Uniqlo… seem to be the most important in the world grail for them. They have a fixed (ridiculous) salary and then will be paid on a piecework basis. Of course, for a piece to be accepted, the garment is checked, inspected and if it meets the long list of criteria for clothing to be exported, the seamstress will be paid.

If the garment does not meet the criteria, the brand will ask for its destruction, to prevent the branded clothing from being resold later at a low price to Vietnamese. If I remember correctly, in 2010, we talked about 40 000VND for a pair of pants, that is to say 1,5€. And for them, also in 2010, 4 million VND of monthly salary was considered as a good salary (150€), so we are talking about 100 pants per month, or 5 per working day.

It was like a shock for me because not coming from the same social background, I would never have accepted such a salary. Moreover, even in Vietnam, being a seamstress is considered as something easy (like being a cashier in France), of the “anyone can do it” kind, whereas not at all: the proof is that I never managed to make a shirt.

However, this is the path chosen by rural women if they have no other qualifications, or if they no longer want to be housekeepers. I remember, we had a cleaning lady, who lived with us to take care of my little sister for many years, and to thank her and give her a future, my parents paid her evening sewing lessons for several years. And one day, she was able to realize her dream and joined a factory in Ho Chi Minh City.

Another type of seamstress is even better paid than all the others. They are model/prototype seamstresses. They make the prototypes following the drawings and the others base themselves on what they do to make the orders.

There is another job that is very popular in the factories, but rather reserved for men, it is the fabric cutter. Of course, the patterns are now cut by computers, but you have to manually fold meters and meters of fabric, so that the pocket with the floral pattern matches the shirt perfectly. And this is a very rare skill, which we aren’t taught at school.

Made in Vietnam

I really enjoyed these 3 months spent next to the apprentice seamstresses. It’s by learning a trade that you fully realize what’s really behind it… With the mass consumption, and the lower and lower prices, you may look at a 10€ garment with contempt, saying “I’ll wear it once anyway and then I’ll throw it away”, but do you know that behind each garment, the seamstresses have spent many hours learning how to make them; learning to respect the specifications; and not being paid for the clothes that don’t respect them?

Every time I come across a “Made in Vietnam” garment, I tell myself that I have in my hands the proof of success of a Vietnamese seamstress, perhaps one of the girls I was in class with. And I silently congratulate her for having reached the grail they were all aiming for: a job in a sewing factory.

If you have the opportunity to move to Hoi An, try the Vietnamese custom clothing service, enjoy this handiwork, we wrote a guide on the subject here

If you are interested in craftsmanship, I wrote another article about my jewelry courses in Paris here

2 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *