In this panoramic social history, Sofi Thanhauser tells five stories organized by fabric—Linen, Cotton, Silk, Synthetics, Wool—about the clothes we wear and where they come from, from the opulent court of 17th-century France's Louis Quatorze to the labor camps in modern-day Chinese-occupied Xinjiang.
One of the great pleasures of this panoramic history of getting dressed is Sofi Thanhauser’s ability to spot moments...where human desire and material culture collide ... Worn, though, consists of much more than a string of entertaining anecdotes about people raiding the dressing-up box and embarrassing themselves in the process ... None of this is logistically or morally simple and the great virtue of Thanhauser’s analysis is how alive she is to the difficulty of making these networks legible, even when they lie relatively close to come ... Thanhauser’s approach to exposing a system gone so horribly wrong is to synthesise the existing literature, add fresh insights drawn from her own fieldwork, and deliver the findings in a richly evocative narrative powered, but never overwhelmed, by a sense of righteous anger.
Although there is much to be depressed about in this book (the writing at times can turn into a bit of a jeremiad), in wool especially there is reason for optimism ... I couldn’t help smiling at the notion of a group of anarchists crocheting scarves or embroidering table runners. Worn is Ms. Thanhauser’s first book. It’s admirable, meticulously researched, and although occasionally tendentious, makes us pay attention.
... a work of history, it is less popular than personal and less about clothing itself—its types, its richness, its diversity—than about the sociopolitical dimensions of its production. Those who hope to find out from this book what wonderful clothes people used to wear, in what different ways and for what varied purposes, might be disappointed. It is one thing to describe the history and present state of textile industries in India, for example, but it is unfortunate that Thanhauser does not take this opportunity to discuss the long history of the sari, its evolution through centuries of conquest and colonialism, and its connections to gender, religion and sexuality in India. The scope of the book is narrower than its ambition, and the writing seldom attains the eloquence to which it aspires. These reservations notwithstanding, I still want people to read this book. As an argument against the horrors of fast fashion and the social and environmental disasters it provokes, it is powerful and persuasive. What’s more, it might make you think twice about stepping into that high-street store again.
