Balaji Ravichandran
THE WASHINGTON POST – Do you understand muslins, sir? Mrs Allen questions Mr Tilney in Jane Austens Northanger Abbey. She is bewildered that a man would care about fabric. It turns out that Mr Tilney can not only distinguish authentic Indian muslins from imitations, but can also identify them. Although Mrs Allen’s comment might seem to be a passing detail that demonstrates her fashion-obsessed nature, Austen always shows us more.
For centuries, the Indian subcontinent has been home to muslin (a plain weave cotton fabric). Indian muslin was treasured in Rome as it was in China, and was popular in Europe in the 16th and17th Centuries.
But, even though we don’t often speak of muslins these days, or if we only see fine Indian muslins in Jane Austen’s pages, there is a reason. British colonialism, which entwined aggressive protectionism at home with violently free trade abroad made it necessary for local artisans to abandon their craft and shift to cotton cultivation. This led to a long, beautiful tradition being shattered and a rapid, precipitous decline. Indian muslin became a rare, sought-after commodity in Europe, while English muslin – cheap, industrial, protected by the state – became the norm.
Sofi Thanhausers Wear: A Peoples History of Clothing collects many such accounts of fabrics. They offer rich, interesting and often surprising insights to human history if we are more curious about them. It is a deep, sustained inquiry into the history of what we wear and how it has changed over the past 500 years.
The book is divided in five parts, each dedicated to a particular fabric: wool, silk, cotton and silk. Thanhauser visits the world to learn firsthand about the origins of each fabric, its production methods, connections with local history, and the impact it has on people’s lives. She also provides the historical and anthropological contexts to show how and to what extent textile manufacturing has been at heart of great sociopolitical movements all over the globe.
Take cotton. The author begins her journey in Lubbock Texas, where she watches a cotton harvest. This allows her to discuss – though not in any great detail – the role slavery played in the establishment and cultivation of a crop of which the United States (US) is now the largest global exporter. She estimates the environmental cost of cotton at twenty thousand litres per pair of jeans. That’s enough water to make one pair of jeans. It also provides enough water to grow the wheat needed to bake one loaf of bread every week for a year.
She describes the devastating effects of pesticides and herbicides on the ecosystem as well as the people who work in the fields. She then visits South India’s cotton factories, which were once the largest supplier of cotton in the world. She is able to see the devastating effects of British colonialism as well as modern free-market practices on a rich and varied textile tradition. She discovers that intensive cotton farming is responsible for droughts, water shortages, the death of animals, starvation, and suicide among farmers.
We also saw similar connections between the fortunes and women’s rights in the workplace, the decline in Chinese silk and the rise of mass fashion, through Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette; and between synthetic fabrics and America’s aggressive reach in the global textile trade.
The driving force behind all of it is greed and an unquenchable desire to capital. The victims are always the poor, marginalised and the vanquished. While Thanhauser does see some potential for resistance in small-scale revivals and local crafts and indigenous traditions, Thanhauser’s outlook is dire. She knows that local wool, vintage shops, and sewing one’s own clothes are only a small part of the solution. They are also not affordable for everyone. She can’t solve this problem on her own.
The subtitle of Worn refers to A Peoples History of Clothing. Yet, as a work of history, it is less popular than personal and less about clothing itself – its types, its richness, its diversity – than about the sociopolitical dimensions of its production.
This book might disappoint those who are hoping to discover what beautiful clothes people wore in different ways and for different purposes. It’s one thing to write about the current state of Indian textile industries. But Thanhauser doesn’t take the opportunity to discuss the long history and evolution of the sari through centuries of conquest, colonialism, and more. The book’s scope is less than its ambition, and the writing rarely achieves the elegance to which it aspires.
Despite my reservations, I recommend this book to everyone. It is powerful and persuasive as a strong argument against fast fashion’s horrors and the social and environment disasters it causes. You might also be hesitant about shopping at high-street stores again.