Worn: A People’s History of Clothing, Sofi Thanhauser
I wrote about Worn: A People’s History of Clothing for The i Paper as part of a feature on the dark side of the fashion industry.
I found Worn enthralling. It’s bleak stuff, but a fascinating social history. It looks at clothing through the fabrics we use - linen, cotton, wool and synthetics - tracing each back to its origins and place in industrialisation and globalisation. Just like other natural resources, how we grow and extract these crops has a huge fallout on the environment, agricultural workers and factory workers.
But there is love and light, too! Such as how Paris became the world’s fashion capital through the court of Louis XIV.
I used to read social histories and giant food politics books often but rarely find the time now, both with my focus on fiction and parenting and the constant exhaustion and recovery cycle of life. I’m so very glad I took the time with this one, recommend it to anyone with a brain and a soul.