SPINNING A YARN

The book, “The Fabric of Civilization,” weaves a fascinating tale.

By Cary Sherburne

Textiles are such a part of the fabric of our lives (pun intended) that we take them for granted. But when you understand how fabric is woven throughout the development of civilization, it’s pretty amazing what a significant role it has played.

I recently read a fascinating book, “The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World,” by Virginia Postrel. It’s a literal encyclopedia of the impact of fibers and fabrics on human development going back thousands of years. And while it’s probably more information than you really need at any given time, it’s an excellent reference book to have around – and very, very well-written.

The language of fabric is also interwoven into our language. Here’s a brief excerpt from the book that demonstrates this:

“We no more imagine a world without cloth than one without sunlight or rain. We drag out heirloom metaphors –’on tenterhooks,’ ‘towheaded,’ ‘frazzled’ – with no idea that we are talking about fabric and fibers. We repeat threadbare clichés: ‘whole cloth,’ ‘hanging by a thread,’ ‘dyed in the wool.’ We catch airline shuttles, weave through traffic, follow comment threads. We speak of life spans and spinoffs and never wonder why drawing out fibers and twirling them into thread looms so large in our language. Surrounded by textiles, we’re largely oblivious to their existence and to the knowledge and efforts embodied in every scrap of fabric. Yet the story of textiles is the story of human ingenuity.”

For those of you who are professionals in the textiles and apparel industry, you may already know much of the history that’s included in the book. While I write about the industry, I am not a professional practitioner. But I am a lifelong fiber artist – everything from spinning and weaving to knitting and needlework. So for me, the book was fascinating.

Take cotton, for example -- the story about how cotton developed from two different wild versions found in Africa and Mexico, and how humans cultivated them in each of these regions to encourage the growth of cotton with longer fibers. Then, somehow, an African seed crossed the ocean to Mexico and cross-bred with the Mexican version, which gave rise to the beginnings of cotton as we know it. This is not just a seed with a few wispy strands, but a cotton boll with long staple suitable for spinning. No one really knows how that happened. They do know it was thousands of years ago before humans were making that trek. Theories abound, though we may never know the truth.

And silk is another interesting story documented in the book. Chinese learned to breed silkworms, fed them just the right amount of fresh mulberry leaves, watched them spin their little cocoons and then destroyed the worm before it could destroy the cocoon. The story of how silk production traveled around the world, how silk was once a form of currency, and how the production of silk has progressed over the years is also fascinating.

And it’s a story that continues today with a company in Silicon Valley, Bolt Threads, creating silk from fermented yeast that delivers a white

powder. Bolt has developed a process to wet spin this powder into “silk” fibers that can be dyed, and then knitted or woven into cloth. While this type of silk is probably a few years from going mainstream, it is, according to Postrel, the main ingredient in the first entirely new fiber in decades. Beyond the various types of fibers discussed in the book, Postrel also goes into great detail about how the crafts of knitting and weaving developed over the years and how automation has changed everything. For example, she cites African kente cloth, strips of cloth that are hand woven and then sewn together to form a larger piece of cloth, or worn in one piece as a head cloth or shawl. These fabrics could take months, or even years, to complete. But with today’s automated looms, the same patterns can be woven in minutes or hours. Knitting also has a fascinating history. Again, it started as a completely manual process, but today there are 3D knitting machines that can knit a fully formed garment, such as a sweater, all in one piece with virtually no manual labor required. I have to admit, though, from a craftsperson point of view, I still like selecting and preparing the yarn and watching the patterns emerge from my needles. That being said, this ability to automate knitting to the extent that’s being done today is one way we will re-shore knitting and reestablish its manufacturing in North America. Just as one example, with a regular knitting machine, all of the pieces of the sweater are knitted separately, and workers, called linkers, assemble the final garment manually. 3D knitting machines eliminate that manual step. It not only takes time out of the process, but also reduces waste, enables knitting on demand for customized items and the ability to reduce inventory risk. Postrel also goes into great detail about the development and evolution of dyeing. Dyes, of course, are one of the worst polluters in the textile manufacturing process, not to mention the water waste. One U.S. dye house, Swisstex, focuses on reducing the amount of water, electricity, gas and labor needed to dye each pound of cloth, continually modifying machines and processes, while taking advantage of robots. One example is water use. In a regular dyeing process, the dye house might use as much as 25 gallons of water to dye on pound of fabric. Swisstex has gotten it down to 3 gallons. And now we are seeing spray dying emerging as well, which could bring water usage – and wastewater pollution – down even further. All of this also reduces carbon emissions, something we will hear more and more about in 2021 and beyond as the world (hopefully) tries to get a handle on the effects of climate change. “This is something that’s become very important this year [2019],” said Keith Dartley of Swisstex. “This year is the first time where I’ve begun to see brands and retailers making sourcing decisions on sustainability. Why? Because the consumer is no longer accepting irresponsible environmental practices.” Adding further to that drive is the impact of the pandemic and how it has laid bare the frailties of global textile supply chains. Brands and retailers are working to figure out how best to restructure supply chains – not as quickly as we would like, for sure, but it is a massive task. It took decades to get those processes in place, and hopefully it won’t take decades to make them more sustainable. While the history of fabrics and human civilization is fascinating, there are also many lessons to be learned. As the world has become more digitally enabled, the textiles and apparel industry has been able to benefit from those technologies. Although everything from how fabric designs are created and garments are designed, to digitally printing fabrics with less waste and pollution, to magical cutting technologies that can make a huge difference in automating a factory, the last mile, of course, is sewing, which still requires manual labor. But even there, advances are being made that are quite incredible. I encourage everyone to read “The Fabric of Civilization.” It’s fascinating, educational and a great research resource. And let’s all keep pushing toward a more sustainable industry. There is much we can do, step by step, until the wave of change becomes a tsunami, and the industry emerges almost unrecognizable from a century ago. ●

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