Threads of Globalization: Fashion, Textiles, and Gender in Asia in the Long Twentieth Century

Threads of globalization is an interdisciplinary volume that brings fashion-specific garments, motifs, materials, and methods of production into dialogue with gender and identity in various cultures throughout Asia during the long twentieth century. It examines how the shift from artisanal production to ’fast fashion’ over the past 150 years has devalued women’s textile labour and how skilled textile/ garment makers and the organizations that support them are preserving and reviving heritage traditions. It also offers examples of how socially engaged artists in Asia and the diaspora use their work to criticize labour and environmental abuses in the global fashion industry.

Melia Belli Bose is an Associate Professor of South Asian Art History at the University of Victoria