A people's history of clothing | RSA REPLAY

What does what we wear tell us about who we are?

As our world has changed, the way we produce and wear clothes has changed with it. Industrialisation moved textile work out of everyday life and into factories, creating a complex, inscrutable mass clothing trade that moves faster than the planet can sustain. What has the changing story of clothes meant for the people who make and wear them, and for the world we all live in?

Writer and artist Sofi Thanhauser traces the history of our favourite textiles, examining how we went from making fabric for ourselves to relying on a clothing system that’s costing the earth whilst producing clothes of little value. Exploring the complexities of the modern market, she considers how our clothing habits should change to respect the boundaries of our planet, revive the art of making, and validate the rights of consumers and workers.

#RSAclothing

[lauraholland]

The original turn against synthetics from my perspective was in the early 60's- my mother turned my father over to nylon shirts- easier to wash and no iron. In a few weeks they yellowed and he could no longer wear them because a white shirt had to be white- she had got rid of the cotton ones so it was a very expensive mistake- so she was suspicious of synthetic fibres from then on. Not until polyester becoming very popular in the 1980's did synthetics start to worm their way back in. The vast majority of my wardrobe is still natural fibres, I remain unconvinced by synthetics.