Most mills and factories gave in to the relentless drumbeat of modernity, with a laser focus on efficiency over all other values, long ago. Lauren Yates, the director and designer of W’menswear, has found one such factory just ten miles down the road from her base in Bangkok, Thailand. W’menswear has partnered with Ming Fong Knitting 1985, a family and woman-owned and operated factory manufacturing with labor-intensive hand frame knitting machines to produce a high quality and lovely low-tension fabric you can’t create any other way. Lauren teamed up with Ming Fong Knitting to make her new Track Sweater and Waffle Pullover for her line - in the video below, Lauren dives into what makes Ming Fong Knitting 1985 one of those very special and rare factories. This partnership is just the latest example of Lauren’s commitment to Thai manufacturing, supporting women-owned enterprises, and producing the highest quality garments possible.
Ming Fong Knitting uses what are broadly known as hand-frame flatbed knitting machines. While not as known today, the best parallel to these is the loopwheel circular knitting machine. Obsolete by modern standards, with a long history of improvements from simple beginnings, both of these machines leverage mechanization to increase the output of skilled labor. More importantly, they do so while retaining the character of the fiber being knit rather than demanding that it be transformed into something unrecognizable. Simply put, the machine works for the fiber, not vice versa. The output in both cases is a low tension, created with gentle fiber handling. The knitting process does not damage high-quality fibers, which is unheard of on more modern machines.
As we move through the history of textile production, there are moments where a balance is found between fiber, maker, and machine. Jersey knit on a loopwheel machine [ backlink to loopwheel article], and wovens produced on shuttle looms have character and still invoke the hand of the maker.
Hand-powered knitting machines were in use in mass production long after most textile producers had moved onto powered equipment with significantly faster output. The garments created on the manual straight bar machines were known for being extremely high quality due to the gentle knitting action, low tension, and fashion shaping (which reduces the waste of expensive yarns).
These flatbed knitting machines fell out of popularity by the mid-20th Century in favor of faster-powered machines. But, In 1975, the Taiwanese manufacturer Flying Tiger began production of new hand-powered flat knitting machines, picking up from where the earlier models had left off. It is these Flying Tiger machines that are used at Ming Fong Knitting 1985, continuing the long history of hand-powered knitting.
Pre-dating circular knitting technology was the hand-frame flatbed knitting machine. The basic principles of this machine are still in use today, even in the most advanced automated v-bed knitting machines. Just as modern high-speed, high-tension circular knitting machines evolved from hand-turned stocking machines, modern flatbed knitting machines have evolved from the original hand-frame machines.
The first iteration of the hand-frame flatbed knitting machine was created by Rev. William Lee in Nottingham, England in 1589. This was the first time a machine had been developed to perform the equivalent of time-intensive hand labor of knitting mechanically. While the machine was a commercial failure during Lee’s lifetime, this invention is considered the seed of the industrial revolution for the textile industry.
The full history between Lee’s invention of the hand-frame knitting machine and the final iteration of the hand-powered flat knitting machine is long, colorful, and well worth digging into. In the time period between 1589 and the mid-1800s, the technology was copied, improved, and copied again until in 1863, Rev. Isaac William Lamb was the first to patent the hand-powered flat knitting machine. Henri Edouard Dubied, after seeing Lamb’s machine at the Paris World Expo in 1867, bought the rights to make the machines at his factory in Switzerland. These machines became known as Dubies and, along with other similar machines made in Europe, would dominate the space until they became obsolete in the postwar years.
Knitting machines of all types transformed labor and industry, beginning in England and spreading throughout the world. The knitwear industry relied on outwork, a system that has historically relied on women’s labor. Women have always been the primary source of labor for knitwear, beginning with handknitting and continuing on forward alongside the technological developments in the industry. This outwork system meant that entrepreneurs could avoid high fixed-wage costs and created another source of income for rural populations. This system also allowed for the suppression of wages, as the supply of skilled labor always outstripped demand.
The manual nature of knitwear machines allowed for families to have one or two machines in the home for outwork. All of the manually operated machines were small enough to fit into one’s home, required nothing but hand power, and could be used in the times between domestic tasks. These women embraced the shift from hand to machine knitting, which sustained a production model that combined factory and domestic production and relied upon labor flexibility, low wages, and a ready supply of skill.
Eventually, bigger powered knitting machines took over for hand frame machines. This took labor out of the home and into the industrial-scale factories. Knitting was no longer a cottage industry. The grotesque forward march of modernity generates a twitching and anxious desire for efficiency and productivity above all. Labor becomes disconnected from their product, moving from artisans to push-button drivers of automation. Quality declines. Fibers begin to serve the machines rather than machines being made to meet the needs of the fibers.
With the rise of massive industrial-scale knitting machines, hand-powered machines were mostly obsolete. Now, in the 21st Century, they have been reclaimed by artisans. Shetland, the Scottish isle known for its knitwear, is a prime example of this. There, the interdependence of craft and industrial production lasted longer than anywhere else in the Scottish knitwear industry. The survival and resilience of handcraft on these islands alert us to the dependence of the knitwear industry as a whole on hand skills. These skills — possessed mainly by women — continue to remain vital to the production of luxury knitwear in particular.
W’menswear, with Ming Fong Knitting 1985, is producing high-quality knitwear made by skilled artisans whose touch can be felt in the knit. It is so rare today for anything to retain the hand of the maker, especially in clothing. With the lovely low-tension knit made on hand-powered machines, the maker comes through with respect to the fibers, guaranteeing a garment that will last.
