Textile Science

Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women. Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have omitted virtually half the picture.

I used to love the rattle and whoosh of my grandma's buttons as they scattered from their Quality Street tin. An inlaid wooden chest the size of a shoe box holds Lynn Knight's button collection. A collection that has been passed down through three generations of women: a chunky '60s-era toggle from a favourite coat, three tiny pearl buttons from her mother's first dress after she was adopted as a baby, a jet button from a time of Victorian mourning. Each button tells a story.

There is a major disconnect between what we wear and our knowledge of its impact on land, air, water, labor, and human health. Even those who value access to safe, local, nutritious food have largely overlooked the production of fiber, dyes, and the chemistry that forms the backbone of modern textile production. While humans are 100 percent reliant on their second skin, it’s common to think little about the biological and human cultural context from which our clothing derives.

Claire Wilcox has been a curator of fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum for most of her working life. In Patch Work, she steps into the archive of memory, deftly stitching together her dedicated study of fashion with the story of her own life lived in and through clothes. From her mother's black wedding suit to the swirling patterns of her own silk kimono, her memoir unfolds in spare, luminous prose the spellbinding power of the things we wear.

Why does fashion hold so much power over us? Most of us care about how we dress and how we present ourselves. Style offers clues about everything from class to which in-group we belong to. Bad Feminist for fashion, Dress Code takes aim at the institutions within the fashion industry while reminding us of the importance of dress and what it means for self-presentation. Everything—from societal changes to the progress (or lack thereof) of women’s rights to the hidden motivations behind what we choose to wear to align ourselves with a particular social group—can be tracked through clothing.

This is the first academic study of sneakers and the subculture that surrounds them. Since the 1980s, American sneaker enthusiasts, popularly known as 'sneakerheads' or 'sneakerholics', have created a distinctive identity for themselves, while sneaker manufacturers such as Reebok, Puma and Nike have become global fashion brands. How have sneakers come to gain this status and what makes them fashionable?

Stitched Up delves into the alluring world of fashion to reveal what is behind the clothes we wear. Moving between Karl Lagerfeld and Karl Marx, the book explores consumerism, class, and advertising to reveal the interests which benefit from exploitation. Tansy E. Hoskins dissects fashion’s vampiric relationship with the planet and with our bodies to uncover what makes it so damaging.

We may not often think of our clothes as having a function beyond covering our naked bodies and keeping us a little safer from the elements. But to discount the enormous influence of clothing on anything from economic cycles to the future of water scarcity is to ignore the greater meaning of the garments we put on our backs. Disrobed vividly considers the role that clothing plays in everything from natural disasters to climate change to terrorism to geopolitics to agribusiness.

In this ambitious global project, 200 women share their inspiring stories of success and courage, love and pain, redemption and generosity. This updated, abridged edition includes powerful new interviews and stirring quotes alongside selections from the original book, all answering the same five questions. This new edition is an illuminating audiobook for the modern woman and a lovely gift for mothers, sisters, daughters, and friends.

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the lunar surface in July of 1969, they wore spacesuits made by Playtex: 21 layers of fabric, each with a distinct yet interrelated function, custom-sewn for them by seamstresses whose usual work was fashioning bras and girdles. This book is the story of that spacesuit. It is a story of the triumph over the military-industrial complex by the International Latex Corporation, best known by its consumer brand of "Playtex" - a victory of elegant softness over engineered hardness, of adaptation over cybernetics.

In today's world, widespread misinformation presents significant challenges to achieving true environmental sustainability. Unfortunately, even some of the most influential global organizations base their actions on unscientific notions and misconceptions, contributing to the problem. This book confronts commonly held beliefs that shape the global public’s perception of critical environmental issues. By focusing on textiles, a key part of daily life that generates significant waste, it uncovers major gaps in our understanding, from material selection to care practices and disposal methods.

Trailblazing transgender actress, activist, and style icon Candis Cayne has spent a lifetime learning how to see herself for who she really is, and along the way has taught herself and others how to celebrate inner beauty as the perfect starting point for outer radiance. Drawing from her personal journey to self-acceptance and comprised of a unique combination of cross-barrier, body-positive wellness and style advice, Hi Gorgeous! is a one-of-a-kind beauty guide that will speak to all women.

For two and a half years, Amanda Czerniawski was a sociologist turned plus-size model. Journeying into a world where, as a size 10, she was not considered an average body type, but rather, for the fashion industry, "plus-sized", Czerniawski studied the standards of work and image production in the plus-sized model industry. Fashioning Fat takes us through a model's day-to-day activities, first at open calls at modeling agencies and then through the fashion shows and photo shoots.

Not an easy listen. Intellectual. Literary. If you're looking for something vapid, move on. This is a humorous story of insanity in the high-energy high-fashion world of the future. Marla Gershe is going nuts and she's taking the Textile Planet with her.

Una reflexión sobre nuestras elecciones a la hora de vestir. Una propuesta consciente e imaginativa ante la voracidad consumista. El título La moda justa responde a una doble acepción. La primera se refiere a tener en el armario la cantidad justa de ropa, la suficiente, la proporcionada. A huir de la voracidad. La segunda habla de elegir lo íntegro, lo producido en un contexto digno, en formas con las que nadie salga perdiendo.

Embark on an extraordinary journey as this book unveils the fusion of music and fashion through the careers of Beyoncé & Taylor Swift. The narrative transcends borders, providing a passport to witness the seismic impact of two of the world's most influential artists on the global stage.

'Look' er en bog om tøj, tekstiler og mode. Om at læse og blive læst, og om den transformative kraft, der findes i at klæde sig på, klæde sig ud og skabe et look. Om stoffet mellem os og resten af verden. I 'Look' podes tøj og læsning på hinanden; i en række tekster, som spænder fra essayistik til lyrisk prosa, undersøger Ida Holmegaard tøj som sprog og materiale. Det er en bog om tøjets roller i litteraturen, i at skabe og omskabe køn, i politiske protester, i magtforhold, i sex, kærlighed og på det prekære arbejdsmarked.