Book Review: To Dye For by Alden Wicker

 

 

Reading To Dye For by Alden Wicker, I felt like I was reading the 21st century incarnation of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring or Upton Sinclair's The Jungle--a book of investigative journalism with the power to blow the lid off industry corruption and change the world.

It sounds like hyperbole, but not only do I recommend this book to every costumer, garment-maker, cosplayer, sewing enthusiast, fashion maven, and clothing designer, but I honestly think every fabric wearing human should read it. 

You may be wondering (as was I), how can our clothing poison us? Upon consideration, I recalled the legendary "arsenic green" dyes discovered and marketed in the mid-19th century, and Wicker elaborates upon the myriad ways dyes, finishes, and other properties of 21st-century "high performance" textiles can contain hidden dangers.

I learned of the book via this article, an overview of the toxicity of flight crew uniforms, written by the author in the Guardian. And in fact the book opens with an in-depth consideration of the plight of flight attendants on several airlines, poisoned by their redesigned and remade new uniforms. 

Subsequent chapters concern the history of toxicity in clothing items (going back literally millennia!), why azo (polyester) dyes are different from prior toxic dyes like aniline dyes and "arsenic green", hazards of performance finishes like stain resistance/flame retardants/wrinkle resistance, and a great (hopeful) chapter on how to change your habits to protect yourself and work for industry change. 

The book concludes by returning to the various airline professionals whose cases she opened the book with, following up with how their conditions have progressed in the intervening years. And (SPOILER) their cases are not conclusive or cut-and-dried. The very nature of their plight makes for indecisive outcomes and no singly culpable substance or chemical. Industries argue (correctly) that it's anecdotal. But a preponderance of anecdotal evidence in this instance is significant and worth consideration.

 

Their stories and the book in general are epic and alarming yet not without hope. I have a tendency to gawk at disaster, so I read the book in a single-day marathon. If you're more sensitive to Epic Bad, you might need to read it in digestible bits over time. 

 

But I'm serious when I say, every clothes-wearing American [1] needs to read this book and make informed decisions about their sewn-product purchasing choices. 

 

Directors and designers for any theatre that aspires to sustainable practices must inform themselves about the depth and breadth of the textile industry, and this book is an excellent source for not only some fairly disturbing facts but also some strategies for developing best-practice goals.

[1] Some of the info concerns global fashion production, but all the regulations/controls cited are US-specific. So I suppose the book might be a work of Schadenfreude for nations with more stringent regulations on clothing toxicity.