A Design Project Helps People Remember Amsterdam's Women Workers

A design project can help people see a history they have forgotten. Hanka van der Voet explores the lives of women who made clothes in Amsterdam. These workers are called seamstresses because they sew clothing for a living. Her project, All Work is Women’s Work, shares their work and their efforts to organize together.

Amsterdam was an important clothing production centre in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But Hanka found few signs of these workers in the city today. A small 1970s exhibition catalogue helped her learn about this missing history. She became interested in The Seamstress Union, an early labour union made up entirely of women. A labour union brings workers together to protect their interests.

The project uses several forms to tell this story beyond a written essay. Beau Bertens designed the book, which Clotheslines Press published. It includes a map showing clothing workshops mentioned in the historical material. Readers also receive stickers that invite them to mark places of exploitation themselves. The design gives readers a way to take part in remembering this history.

The team connected the book's appearance to the workers' own newspaper, De Naaistersbode. They studied its simple layout and its Art Deco-inspired decoration. They used the historical decoration to develop patterns across the book. Every typeface in the publication was also designed by a woman. This choice responds to women's past exclusion from printing and type design.

Hanka also worked with Alia Mascia to create clothes with printed historical material. These clothes show newspaper content, including slogans, advertisements, and poems. Clothing becomes another way to share the stories of clothing workers. The project shows that old records can still connect with life today. Its design choices help bring those records out of storage and into public view.