Carry Somers is the cofounder of Fashion Revolution, an activist organization that advocates for social and environmental responsibility in fashion. In The Nature of Fashion, she brings readers on a journey through time that starts at the beginning of humanity's history of garment and cloth making and ends in Latin America in 2024. Somers also travels the world and highlights the many Indigenous peoples who first used the fibers and dyes that people still use and wear in the 21st century.
The Nature of Fashion is not a reference guide nor a straightforward history, but a poetic celebration of each culture and its contributions. Somers follows the strands through time as the first humans learned to make cloth out of bark and flax, to whiten their cloth in the snow, and to create language out of knots. In the 21st century, war, peace, and sustainability create the current state of thread, where humans are once again learning to coexist with the plants they weave and rediscovering their wisdom.
Somers transports readers, whether she is discussing Papua New Guinea in 30 CE or Brazil in 1870, or the multitudes of other times and places in The Nature of Fashion. She discusses how the color puce bewitched Marie Antoinette and her court, and when the English tried to stop the Irish from wearing yards of saffron yellow.
An excellent choice for readers interested in a deeper look at the way humans clothe themselves, The Nature of Fashion will fit in on any bookshelf containing Aja Barber's Consumed or Victoria Finlay's Color. Dense but engaging, The Nature of Fashion is a fashion history like no other. --Alyssa Parssinen, freelance reviewer and former bookseller