Review: Worn: A People’s History of Clothing

Sofi Thanhauser, Worn: A People’s History of Clothing (Pantheon 2022)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56753473-worn?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=srDgYhsohK&rank=1

Here is the social history of clothing, its history and economics rather than fashion.
The impact of class is not ignored. In early mediaeval Germany, for example, there was conflict between organised guild weaving and home weavers. Later, labour was divided by sexism and racism. Mothers entered the early factories with children in tow.
Before the 1880s under ‘coverture’, married women possessed nothing of their own other than their ‘linen’. Until 1964 black women were barred from working in textile factories, seen as high status work as compared to domestic service. In 19th century America often the only economic option for a woman was to take in ‘piecework’, embroidering linen at home.
The structure of this history is wonderful. It’s not organised chronologically (boring) but rather by fabric—first comes linen, then cotton—its history, technology, economics and effect on humans. By the time we get to cotton the labour is by African slaves, and it is brutal.
She outlines not only the mechanical processes involved in industrial weaving and knitting but also the climate change caused by water-hungry cotton growing, increased reliance on fossil fuels, enforced labour of ethnic minorities and the threat to silk production of environmental challenges to pollution-sensitive mulberry trees.
Synthetics have offered the industry mass-production, but often at a high environmental, sometimes poisonous, cost. The industry also created its own gravedigger; Worn outlines the history of labour resistance to exploitation and capitalist class thuggery. Today’s EPZs (export processing zones) make employing underpaid non-union third world labour and systematic exploitation of raw materials easy. International trade agreements like NAFTA legislate to globalise exploitation. Big retailers like Walmart and Zara have such buying power they squeeze sweatshop workers’ wages and safety.
This is from a ‘material culture’ (pun intended) standpoint, textiles rather that fashion. “A shirt may say ‘Wisconsin’ while its tag reads ‘Made in India’, but the real political story lies in its polycotton blend.”
It reads like Cod or Nathaniel’s Nutmeg. It’s a history, but juicy, full of anecdotes and human details, a tapestry drawing into the weave women’s oppression, class and technological development.
It is highly researched, the author having travelled all over the world visiting factories and interviewing clothing-makers.
Colour illustrations would have enhanced the text. Indeed, for a subject like this, I would think it almost obligatory.