Blue Cast: Virginia Postrel on Viewing History Through a Textile Lens
Going back millennia, one continuous thread throughout historic civilizations is the presence of textiles.
For writer Virginia Postrel, fabric provides a means for studying many different topics—from economics and trade to religion and politics. The author’s latest book, “The Fabric of Civilization,” digs into the cultural role that fabric has played and the technological advances in apparel. In the most recent episode of Blue Cast, Virginia chatted with Lenzing’s Tricia Carey about her book and the ways that consumer attitudes toward textiles have evolved.
“[Textiles] is a very, very rich subject that lets us understand human society much better,” said Virginia.
Virginia’s research for the book took her to academic conferences, trade shows, and to factories in China for a firsthand look at production. She also spoke with some key figures in the industry, including David Sasso of Buhler Yarn and Kyle Blakely from Under Armour. She also attended a workshop with Graham Keegan on indigo dyeing. What stands out to Virginia about indigo is the fact that before globalization, people around the world all separately figured out how to produce the blue dye by leveraging a complicated process.
“Nothing about the indigo plant would say ‘Hey, make blue dye from me,’” said Virginia. “And yet, all around the world, in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, people use different plants to create this beautiful blue dye, which is a fantastic story of what you can do with trial and error and creativity.”
The oldest indigo dyed fabric that has been discovered so far was cotton dating back 6,200 years found in Peru. What stands out about indigo is its staying power. On medieval tapestries, other colors will have faded while the blue remains vibrant centuries later.
Historically, indigo dyed fabric was colored and left alone, which is in contrast to today’s denim production. “It is amazing that we do so much to get the indigo onto the yarn, only to do so much to remove it,” said Tricia.
The approach to indigo has changed over the years, but so has general textile buying behavior. In the 1300s, Florence decreed that women were not allowed to own more than four outfits for wearing in public, and as recently as the 1970s, Virginia remembers not having a plethora of outfit options as well as people making their own clothing for affordability. Since then, production has chased cheaper labor, giving shoppers the ability to build massive wardrobes for less. But with that has come a more disposable attitude toward clothing.
Virginia sees the current affection for fast fashion and newness not as a generational trend, but as something that young people have sought out before. Aspects like the accessibility of quality secondhand options could allow them to build large closets in a more sustainable fashion.
Many of the environmental problems that apparel is facing are issues not of new technology but of scale, explained Virginia. Dyeing—whether using natural or synthetic solutions—has always been harmful, but it is partly the sheer amount of fashion being produced that has made it a greater ecological problem.
“People like to have lots of stuff. There are lots of people in the world,” said Virginia. “That’s why today you see people looking for new technologies or new processes that can still be done at scale but will have lower impacts.”
Listen to the episode here.