The Golden Thread

Starred review from July 1, 2019
This fascinating selection of “13 very different stories” about textiles “help illustrate the vastness of their significance,” restoring them to their rightful place as a central human technology. Fashion writer St. Clair (The Secret Lives of Color) writes that “technologies using perishable materials... may have been more pivotal in the daily lives of the people who lived through them, but evidence of their existence has... been absorbed back into the earth.” She takes readers across the globe, following discoveries of ancient fabric from the Caucasus Mountains (some of them 23,000 years old) to Egypt (where, St. Clair explains, the language contained many words for fabric and wrapping) and then on to China (where silk was used for clothing but also embroidered poetry) and Viking lands (St. Clair highlights the English preoccupation with wool). Textiles went hand in hand with human evolution as Homo sapiens moved from warm climates to cold ones, advanced from sewing pelts to weaving fabrics and from spinning silk to spinning wool. Chapters on more modern textiles include thoughtful disquisitions on space suits, sweatshops, and blue jeans (and the denim tuxedo jacket Levi’s made for Bing Crosby after a hotel ejected him for wearing jeans). Written in elegant prose, this tour of textile history will draw in readers interested in human evolution and culture.

September 1, 2019
Fabrics tell a story of human development from the prehistoric world to the space age. Journalist St. Clair (The Secret Lives of Color, 2017) focuses her spirited, illuminating cultural history on essential fibers that have been spun, knitted, and woven throughout time, from traces of thread discovered in Neolithic caves to the multilayered "one-person spaceships" worn by American astronauts. In each of the chapters the author presents an engaging narrative about plant- and animal-based textiles with particular significance to place and historical period. In ancient Egypt, for example, flax was harvested, beaten, and combed in a laborious process to produce fiber woven into linen, a fabric that became essential for trade, clothing, and mummification. Just as linen was associated with Egypt, silk, produced by worms feeding on mulberry trees, became a lucrative Chinese export. Fragments of the textile have been found in 8,500-year-old tombs and needles, looms, and shuttles unearthed from Neolithic sites. Some fabrics were pressed into surprising use: Although wool is heavy and porous, Viking seafarers depended on it for their sails. Sheep were abundant, and wool was woven to withstand fierce winds and rain. "By some estimates," writes the author, "the sailcloth of the Norwegian Viking-era fleet would have required wool from up to two million sheep." In the stratified society of medieval and Renaissance Europe, when "clothing defined who you were, what you did and your social status," lace signified wealth and power. St. Clair stresses the importance of cotton to 19th-century America's economy as well as its connection to slavery. Besides economic importance, fabrics can mean the difference between life and death for humans confronting extreme environments. The push to create new fabrics has led to synthetics, beginning with nylon and followed by many other materials that proved hugely profitable for manufacturers. Chemicals involved in synthetic production, however, expose workers to serious health risks, spurring the need for environmentally friendly methods of producing biodegradable fibers. The most fascinating research St. Clair reports is the effort to manufacture spider silk, coveted for its incredible strength. Vibrant, entertaining, and brightly informative.

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November 1, 2019
This is a fascinating look at one of those everyday things many of us take for granted: fabric. Instead of tackling fabric's entire history, St. Clair (The Secret Lives of Color, 2017) skips across centuries and around the world, sharing accessible and telling stories about the development, production, and myriad uses of fabric. Beginning with ancient times?there's evidence that Neanderthals started twisting fibers together as early as 90,000 years ago?St. Clair considers Egyptian mummies, wool sails on Viking ships, cotton fashions designed by enslaved people in the American south, protective materials suitable for polar extremes and outer space, and some dreadful, even deadly, manufacturing practices. Other chapters are devoted to lace, class, and bling, demonstrating that the practice of having the most luxurious delicacies created by the poorest of the poor is firmly rooted in history. Whether sharing the silk-making secrets of Chinese empresses or exposing the benefits of performance-enhancing swimsuits, this extensively documented and always entertaining overview works equally well for reading cover to cover or dipping into for snippets.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)