Book Review: Unraveled

 

Maxine Bedat's Unraveled: The Life and Death of a Garment is another must-read for every clothes-wearing human, particularly in America, the UK, and Germany (apparently the 3 largest textile-waste-producing nations.

 The author traces the "lifecycle" of a pair of jeans, from the farming of the cotton fiber to its processing/spinning into yarns, to where those yarns are woven into denim fabric to where the fabric is cut and sewn into jeans, even across where the jeans are sold to the consumer to where they enter the secondhand garment trade to where they finally end up either recycled or put into a landfill.

 It's truly a global journey, and readers may be surprised to see how contemporary fashion production encircles the planet from beginning to end. The author dispels misconceptions about "organic fiber" and "sustainable production," and this book is another sobering call-to-action in the same vein as another recently-reviewed/-released title, Alden Wicker's To Dye For.

Bedat doesn't leave us buried in despair and textile waste though--she enumerates suggestions for how we can reform the fashion industry both as consumers (through well-considered purchasing choices) and as citizens (by advocating for policy change). 

She ends the book with a vision for the future of what our closets and wardrobes could look like in 2030 that is truly inspiring. Like Wicker's book, Unraveled could have been dense and difficult to get through but her engaging writing and ability to focus on the individuals working at each stage of the process (from a cotton farmer in Texas to a Bangladeshi factory worker to a Staten Island garbage truck driver) makes it an engrossing read. 

Highly recommend, particularly for costume designers, fashion enthusiasts, and style influencers.