In the face of a sartorial nightmare involving a cloth mishap, a meticulous tailor opts to design new uniforms for a general out of lively fabric featuring colorful fish and parrots, and the result is unprecedented: bilateral peace between neighboring rivals. In Rocío Martínez's Spanish children's book, El de-sastre perfecto (2010) [The Perfect Tailor/Disaster], a savvy sartorial protagonist exemplifies the empowered depictions of textile arts – whether needlework, tailoring or fashion design – that abound in contemporary Latin American and Spanish cultural representations of professions involving these artforms. I argue that while the seamstress as a relatable protagonist fell out of fashion after the nineteenth century, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries representations of seamstresses re-emerge with a changed image. As a result, contemporary writers challenge the gendered limitations that were especially important in nation-building, and instead offer protagonists who break through the negative connotations involving sewing and morality. Although preoccupations regarding the delineations of private and public spheres often remain, recent sartorial figures deconstruct regional and national borders in addition to blurring gender and sexual borders. By questioning physical, geographical boundaries, the protagonists reflect the interconnected state of garment and textile industries in the global economy.

This rise of interest in the needle and thread is quite surprising: more than ever before, global culture has distanced itself from the sources of clothing and the agents behind the creation of garments. Once lauded expertise has been demoted to unskilled and exploited factory labor, resulting in decreased prices and quality and increased consumption and waste. Yet, literature and popularculture media platforms such as television, films, blogs and other forms of social media tell a different story.