FASHION
FABRIC: THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE MATERIAL WORLD by Victoria Finlay (Profile £25, 528pp)
Since Adam and Eve grabbed fig leaves to clothe themselves, we have relied on the natural world to provide us with food, shelter and clothing —and the damage to that world, and to people, is still being done.
Look around your room — at cotton curtains, silk and velvet cushions, woollen rugs — and ask yourself if you know where in the material world it all comes from.
As for clothes… swathed in a pashmina shawl as I write this, I realise I have never considered its exact origin or journey.
Victoria Finlay now offers a tightly woven warp/weft that answers questions we didn’t know we had. The intricate tapestry is stunning and her pictures are amazing. After being an adventurous traveller who has written best-selling books about the magic worlds both of colour and jewels, Finlay now devotes her insatiable curiosity to fabrics.
Her globetrotting quest (and we’re given five useful maps) for those stories requires delving into history, geography, geo-politics, mechanics, chemistry, trade, religion, magic, anthropology, mythology, fairytale and also all-round human ingenuity — especially when there is money to be made.
Victoria Finlay weaves a warp and a weft with countless answers to the questions we have never asked. Her intricate tapestry contains stunning pictures. She is an explorer and traveler who has written best-selling books about the magic worlds of color and jewels. Now she turns her endlessly curious mind towards fabric (stock photo).
Finlay attempts to weave patchwork and spin in Alabama as part of hands-on research. There’s something in this wonderfully packed haberdasher’s shop for every reader.
But there’s a personal story, too, all the more touching for being restrained. The initial idea for this book met with the approval of Finlay’s ‘healthy, vibrant mother’, who died unexpectedly just months later, to be followed soon afterwards by her father.
All plans had to be put on hold as the grieving daughter felt ‘lost and fractured into small pieces’. Those ‘pieces’ eventually became the elements of the patchwork she and her mother had promised themselves they would one day create together — and combine to turn the beautifully written narrative of this book into a larger patchwork of healing.
The beginning of her journey is to go to the place where barkcloth is made. But there’s a huge snag: access. Bizarrely, the remote Omie tribe in Papua New Guinea ‘had a website and email address, an art administrator and a history of overseas exhibitions’ — but they don’t reply to letters, emails or phone calls.
Then Finlay is warned that someone who travels there regularly takes ‘15 bodyguards’. After that, it appears impossible to fly there. Then it’s cyclone season. So she researches the Congo, but tribal fighting had escalated there, so that wouldn’t work.
Now, only 32 pages later, this inexperienced reader wished the brave author would just put her woolly slippers on.
The elders of the Maisin tribe, a different tribe in Papua New Guinea say “yes” and she is allowed to go, with 15 less bodyguards than usual, along with a single female friend. She’s a photographer. Scary? The Maisin are beautiful and the painted barkcloth is gorgeous.
Finlay’s adventures, vividly recounted, make enthralling reading — but with a sobering subtext tolling out the ongoing logging damage to the mighty forests. The fascinating stories about cotton, wool and pashmina are told from barkcloth.
We follow trade routes, feel anguish at the unimaginable hardships of history, meet some of the extraordinary personalities who developed production methods as well as the ‘ordinary’ men and women who are makers.
Finlay, who also works as an environmental activist and has a parallel job, invites us to think about the harm to nature that is often associated with the desire for cloth. Monsanto’s ruthless exploiting of farmers is a well-known example.
Finlay points out that the wool industry (especially merino wool) is often cruel — with live sheep transported around the world often in appalling conditions and unwanted lambs slaughtered and thrown overboard. Cancer can be caused by pesticides and fertilizers used in India to make cotton.
The beginning of her journey is to go to the place where barkcloth is made. But there’s a huge snag: access. Bizarrely, the remote Omie tribe in Papua New Guinea ‘had a website and email address, an art administrator and a history of overseas exhibitions’ — but they don’t reply to letters, emails or phone calls.
Buddhist ceremonial scarves, like so many of our own cheaper garments, pollute land and sea because the silk they used to be made from rotted naturally, whereas the nylon or polyester of today lasts … and lasts. This can be dangerous for wildlife. Man-made fabrics are useful, of course, but Finlay warns, ‘making and disposing of them is hurting the earth.’
I have blouses and dresses from silk in my own wardrobe. I am grateful that these little creatures, whose hard labor ended up on my back, have not stopped to thank them.
With her customary mix of intelligence and emotional insight, Finlay comments: ‘[The silkworm]Starts to weave its future through small, intentional actions it already knows how to make.
After a few days of dark, stillness, and turning inwards, the fabric is now ready for a new life as an entirely different type of being. Other natural fabrics … come from a crop, a growth event, a haircut. But silk? Silk is a miracle.’
Finlay’s ultimate message is that just as with food, in the ideal world we will know where our fabrics and clothes came from, ‘who made them and where’.
The book serves as both an educational and inspirational resource.