Worn

August 1, 2021

Edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr., You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays is the first comprehensive collection of essays, criticism, and articles by Harlem Renaissance great Hurston, coming at a time when she is in the news again with books like the New York Times best-selling Barracoon (100,000-copy first printing). From Nayeri, an arts and culture writer for the New York Times, Takedown argues that while censorship once happened top-down (think kings and popes), it is now sometimes done bottom-up by activists challenging artists, critics, and museums. Author of the two-volume biography of Alexander Calder, critic Perl argues in Authority and Freedom that art's value lies in its independence from any ideology; "art's relevance has everything to do with what many regard as its irrelevance." Pulitzer Prize-winning musician Reich (love Drumming and Double Sextet!) holds Conversations about his life and music. Focusing on linen, cotton, silk, synthetics, and wool, Pratt Institute professor Thanhauser's Worn tells us everything we would want to know about clothes, what they are made of, and how they have shaped--and been shaped by--human history.

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November 1, 2021
In this deep dive into the history of clothing, Thanhauser confronts the economic impact and environmental damage wreaked by cloth manufacturers throughout history. She considers various materials--linen, cotton, silk, synthetics, and wool--and reports on their origins, uses, and global marketing, effectively combining scrupulous research, interviews, examples drawn from history, literature, pop culture, numerous anecdotes, and engaging commentary. There are multiple mentions of the chronic mistreatment of women and dismissal of women's work, from early, men-only cloth guilds through modern-day exploitation. Along the way, Thanhauser considers crops, water supplies, clothing standards set by rulers, religions, big business versus small shops, unionization, patents, politics, and international competition, explaining how they've all played a part in creating the current countless tons of discarded clothing piling up in dumps around the world. After all this, readers might need a little positivity, and will find it in accounts of contemporary weavers returning to traditional methods and sensibilities. This is a fresh and thoughtful reconsideration about the clothes we wear.

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Starred review from December 6, 2021
Thanhauser, an artist who teaches writing at the Pratt Institute, debuts with a captivating and deeply researched study of the five main fabrics from which clothing is made: linen, cotton, silk, synthetics, and wool. Positing that “there is scarcely a part of the human experience, historic or current, that the story of clothes does not touch,” Thanhauser spotlights historical periods—such as the brocaded silk courts of France’s King Louis XIV—when each fabric was in vogue, and analyzes the political, cultural, and environmental impacts of their production. For example, she discusses the role of cotton (“the most widespread, profitable nonfood crop in the world”) in the history of American slavery, the colonization of India, and the repression of Muslim Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang province, as well as its part in the sixfold increase in overall water consumption during the 20th century. Interweaving eye-popping statistics; immersive descriptions of Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, China’s Yangtze River Delta, and other locales; and vivid profiles of historical figures including union organizer Ella May Wiggins and sewing machine manufacturer Isaac Singer, Thanhauser unearths the secret life of fabrics with skill and precision. Readers won’t look at their wardrobes the same way again.