Jewish Invention Myths: The Ready-to-Wear Clothing Industry
Returning back to ‘jewish invention’ myths; we have the claim that jews invented the ready-to-wear clothing industry – meaning pre-sized off-the-rack clothing rather than traditional tailored clothing – which is typically non-specific by echoed by Kathryn Bernheimer (1) and Rachel Raskin-Zrihen. (2)
This is non-specific claim probably relates to the assumption of jewishness of the Dewachter brothers: Isidore Louis Dewachter, Benjamin Dewachter and Modeste Dewachter. Who started the first ready-to-wear clothing chain store in 1868 in the Belgian cities of La Louvière, Mons, Namur and Leuze which began known under the brand name of ‘Maisons Dewachter’. (3)
The problem is that there is no evidence whatsoever that the Dewachter brothers were jewish other than the fact that Isidore sounds like a jewish first name but was actually a popular Catholic first name among French speakers at the time (which the Dewachters were), (4) that ‘Dewachter’ can be a jewish last name but is actually a common Germano-Dutch last name meaning ‘Watchman’ sometimes appropriated by jews (5) and all of which is rebutted by the fact that the Dewachter family appears to have specifically identified as Walloon (but of likely Flemish roots) not as jewish. (6)
Thus, there is no evidence whatsoever that the Dewachter family were jewish and good evidence they were in fact not.
If we add to that the first ready to wear clothing was actually manufactured in the United States to clothe American troops during the War of 1812 with the British Empire (7) and continued throughout the American Civil War between 1861 and 1865 (8) (in both the Confederacy and the Union) then we can clearly see that the claim that jews invented the ready-to-wear clothing industry is simply an unsubstantiated myth with no factual basis whatsoever.
References
(1) https://boulderjewishnews.org/2009/an-informal-list-of-jewish-inventions-innovations-and-radical-ideas/
(2) https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/when-is-a-jew-not-a-jew/
(3) https://m2-retail.com/en-gb/blogs/news/the-history-of-retail-design; https://kinnu.xyz/kinnuverse/lifestyle/fashion/haute-couture-vs-ready-to-wear/
(4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isidore
(5) https://www.familysearch.org/en/surname?surname=wachter
(6) https://web.archive.org/web/20170821212611/http://www.louisdewis.com/
(7) Cf. Anne Hollander, 1992, ‘The Modernization of Fashion’, Design Quarterly, No. 154, pp. 27–33
(8) Eric Arneson, 2007, ‘Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History’, 1st Edition, Routledge: New York. p. 496