Introduction: Textiles and Clothing as Markers and Makers of Value

The long-dominant narrative about the textile and clothing industries in the modern era is that they are a “race to the bottom” fueled by low-skill work and commensurately low wages. Production centers move easily around the globe to areas offering cheap labor or lax corporate regulation while selling to distant markets disconnected from local cultural values. It is also the case that such markets typically wield significantly greater purchasing power and market influence than do sites of production. This narrative is not without its grounding, certainly in the present and with some resonances historically too, especially where low wages are concerned. But taken alone it limits discourse about the field of textiles and clothing into narrow, largely disconnected silos ranging from organizational history to labor history, history of design and technology, and, of course, history of consumer practices too. Economic concerns are paramount in each of these silos but with...