The clothing industry provides employment for 60 million workers worldwide. More than a quarter of these workers are employed in the Asia-Pacific region, where the industry is based on subcontracted production on behalf of international buyers. Rapid movements of manufacturing activity from country to country in search of cost advantages make clothing workers part of a globalizing labour market where they increasingly suffer from job insecurity. This book presents carefully researched case studies which highlight the ways in which labour is informalized, fragmented and made disposable by the globalization of production. Chapters address issues pertaining to rights and citizenship, and new forms of activism and organization in conjunction and coordination with diverse support groups, consumers, and wider global campaigns. Contributors further examine the role of the nation state, government regulatory bodies, as well as independent monitoring systems such as the International Labour Organization. Although there has been considerable effort directed to understanding how firms operate across multiple countries - in studies of the organization of global production networks, and the implications for complexities of scale, (de)territorialization and state development projects - there has been far less focus on how these processes produce precarious labour and reshape worker consciousness. Offering new insights into the understanding and support of workers in the global textile and garment industry, this book will be of interest to academics in a variety of disciplines including Asian Studies, sociology, political economy, development, human rights, labour and gender.

Apparel Quality: A Guide to Evaluating Sewn Products, Second Edition is a user-friendly guide for evaluating apparel quality to ensure quality products that meet customer expectations. This book provides an overview of apparel production, emphasizing quality characteristics and cues, consumer influences, and motivations impacting purchasing decisions, and highlights the roles of product designers, manufacturers, merchandisers, testing laboratories, and retailers from product inception through the sale of goods. The text is highly illustrated to provide students with the tools needed to evaluate and critique quality elements in apparel and textile products skillfully. New to this Edition: - New fabric technology including e-textiles, sew bots, and automation - International common size equivalents to accompany U.S. size classifications by sex, height, and age - Sustainability considerations for raw materials, design development, and apparel production - Expanded international labeling and safety regulations and compliance for the United States, Canada, EU, and Japan Instructor Resources - The Instructor's Guide provides suggestions for planning the course and using the text in the classroom, including sample syllabi, in-class activities, lab activities, and projects. - The Test Bank includes sample test questions for each chapter - PowerPoint (R) presentations include images from the book and provide a framework for lecture and discussion Instructor's Resources may be accessed through www.fairchildbooks.com. STUDIO Features: - Study smarter with self-quizzes featuring scored results and personalized study tips - Review concepts with flashcards of essential vocabulary and image identification - Watch Videos that take you behind the scenes of factories and testing facilities, to see how concepts covered in the text are applied in the real world

One of the greatest challenges for the apparel industry is to produce garments that fit customers properly. "Anthropometry, Apparel Sizing and Design" addresses the need for improved characterization of our populations in order to tailor garments according to size, weight, and shape of consumers. This book reviews techniques in anthropometry, sizing system developments, and their applications to clothing design.

Part one considers a range of anthropometric methods. The text discusses the range of sizing systems, including data mining techniques, useful for bridging the gap between ergonomists and designers. Chapters examine three-dimensional anthropometric methods and multivariate and bivariate analysis for identifying key body dimensions. Part two then explains how to analyze anthropometric data to develop appropriate sizing systems. Here, the book discusses classification and clustering of human body shapes, the importance of national surveys, and using the data obtained to ensure inclusive design strategies. The book covers sizing systems developed for particular groups, apparel size designation, and the potential for international standardization. It considers the advantages of 3D body scanning and computer-aided design, and the use of body motion analysis to address ease allowance requirements of apparel.

With its distinguished editors and international contributors, this work is an essential reference, particularly due to the specific combination of aspects of anthropometry and the sizing of clothing, for researchers, garment designers, students, and manufacturers in the clothing and fashion industry.
Reviews techniques in anthropometry, sizing system developments, and their applications to clothing designExamines 3D anthropometric methods and multivariate and bivariate analysis for identifying key body dimensionsCovers sizing systems developed for particular groups, apparel size designation, and the potential for international standardization

"Fashion Supply Chain Management Using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technologies" looks at the application of RFID technologies in such areas as order allocation, garment manufacturing, product tracking, distribution and retail. As supply chains in the textiles and fashion industry become ever more complex and global, and as the shift to mass customization puts more pressure on a rapid and flexible response to customer needs, monitoring and improving supply chain efficiency in the industry becomes crucial. Radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies offer a unique opportunity to achieve these goals.

This book reviews the role of RFID technologies in the textiles and fashion supply chain to improve distribution, process management and product tracking, garment manufacturing, and assembly line operations. It also explores how RFID technologies can improve order allocation in the supply chain, and how these technologies can also be used for intelligent apparel product cross-selling. Its chapters also discuss measuring the impact of RFID technologies in improving the efficiency of the textile supply chain, and modeling the effectiveness of RFID technologies in improving sales performance in fashion retail outlets.

"Fashion Supply Chain Management Using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technologies" is a comprehensive resource for academic researchers, industry managers, and professionals within the fashion industry.
Looks at the application of RFID technologies in order allocation, garment manufacturing, product tracking, distribution, and retailReviews RFID technologies in the textiles and fashion supply chain for improving distribution, process management and product tracking, garment manufacturing, and assembly line operationsFocuses on measuring the impact of RFID technologies on efficiency, and modeling the effectiveness of RFID technologies in improving retail outlet sales

Cotton made the fortune of the Fuda family, Egyptian landed gentry with peasant origins, during the second part of the nineteenth century. This story, narrated and photographed by a family member who has researched and documented various aspects of her own history, goes well beyond the family photo album to become an attempt to convey how cotton, as the main catalyst and creator of wealth, produced by the beginning of the twentieth century two entirely separate worlds: one privileged and free, the other surviving at a level of bare subsistence, and indentured.
The construction of lavish mansions in the Nile Delta countryside and the landowners' adoption of European lifestyles are juxtaposed visually with the former laborers' camp of the permanent workers, which became a village ('Izba), and then an urbanized settlement. The story is retold from the perspective of both the landowners and the former workers who were tied to the 'Izba. The book includes family photo albums, photographs of political campaigns and of banquets in the countryside, documents and accounting books, modern portraits of the peasants, and pictures of daily life in the village today.
This is a story that fuses the personal and emotional with the scholar's detached ethnographic reporting-a truly fascinating, informative, and colorful view of life on both sides of a uniquely Egyptian socio-economic institution, and a vanished world: the cotton estate.

Interest in the topic of governance and interfirm relationships in the Ethiopian leather and leather products industry was developed after observing a gap in the literature on value chain research at the international level and finding only a few empirical studies on value chains at the local level. Most of the value chain research conducted throughout the world are either too general or are simply functionalistic and, thus, fail to address the socio-cultural context. This study contributes to the literature in several ways: firstly, the present research suggests that a central focus of value chain analysis should be the examination of social networks within local, but also global, value chains, as social relations might play an important and so far neglected role in the struggle to participate in the rapidly changing world economy. Secondly, as a clear departure from mainstream value chain research, this study makes use of a mixture of value chain and network approaches for exploring processes and micro-level interactions used by individuals to construct and maintain networks.

The twelfth edition of J.J. Pizzuto's Fabric Science provides the most current and comprehensive overview and introduction to the textile industry--from fibers and finishes to applications in fashion design, fashion business, fashion merchandising, apparel product development, textile production management, and interior design. With an increased emphasis on textile sustainability, this best-selling book continues to meet the needs of both students and professionals in the textile, fashion, and related industries. Based on their combined experience in both education and the industry, the authors provide readers with a comprehensive text about the design, structure, and application of textiles. The range of information is broad and deep, and includes basic fiber chemistry, fiber innovations, the fabrication of fabrics, quality assurance, and laws that regulate textiles; updated topics include bio-based fibers, circularity and sustainability, wearable textiles, and revised and updated chapters on fibers, yarns, non-wovens, dyeing, printing, and finishing. The authors also provide readers with information regarding textile-related trade and professional associations and career opportunities in design, production, marketing, merchandising, apparel, and home products. STUDIO Features Include: - Study smarter with self-quizzes featuring scored results and personalized study tips - Review concepts with flashcards of terms and definitions and image identification - Watch videos that bring chapter topics and concepts to life Instructor Resources - Instructor's Guide with teaching suggestions, activities, lecture notes, and a guide to Swatch Kit assignments - Test Bank with over 600 multiple choice, short answer, and true or false questions - PowerPoint (R) presentations include full-color images from the book and provide a framework for lecture and discussion

Fashion Business Cases: A Student Guide to Learning with Case Studies allows students to apply what they are learning in the classroom to real-life situations in the global fashion industry. Adapted from the Bloomsbury Fashion Business Cases (BFBC) online resource, this text will aid instructors in providing high-quality examples from scholars around the world. A mix of introductory, intermediate, and advanced cases ensure that students of all levels can develop the business, communication, and problem-solving skills required of fashion industry professionals. Topics range from corporate social responsibility and sustainable fashion to transparent brand communication and cultural sensitivity. This book is designed to foster critical and ethical thinking as students enter the fashion industry. Key Features: - 40 cases studies, of introductory, intermediate, and advanced level - Learning Objectives and Business Questions included with each case - Two introductory chapters teaching students how to use case studies effectively

In this wide-ranging account, Robert DuPlessis examines globally sourced textiles that by dramatically altering consumer behaviour, helped create new economies and societies in the early modern world. This deeply researched history of cloth and clothing offers new insights into trade patterns, consumer demand and sartorial cultures that emerged across the Atlantic world between the mid-seventeenth and late-eighteenth centuries. As a result of European settlement and the construction of commercial networks stretching across much of the planet, men and women across a wide spectrum of ethnicities, social standings and occupations fashioned their garments from materials old and new, familiar and strange, and novel meanings came to be attached to different fabrics and modes of dress. The Material Atlantic illuminates crucial developments that characterised early modernity, from colonialism and slavery to economic innovation and new forms of social identity.

Whether we are out on the streets or between the sheets, cotton is our constant companion. But behind this ubiquitous fibre prized for its softness lies a darker story of exploitation and hardship. In this penetrating analysis, Adam Sneyd explores the power politics that envelope cotton as major corporate players and countries across Africa, Asia and the Americas compete to control it. In the aftermath of sweatshop scandal exposes and factory collapse disasters, merchants and retailers have called for better cotton farming practices. But in seeking to prevent the next transnational media circus, will companies simply end up cementing business-as-usual? Corporate public relations strategy now competes directly with the voices of an alternative global community that seeks to fundamentally transform the way that cotton is farmed. Yet these demands for cotton to work better for people and the planet have flown under the radar as media attention has focused instead on farmer subsidies and prices. From the local to the global, this book takes the reader on an illuminating journey through the multifaceted and often grubby politics of the fluffy white stuff in the world economy. The pile of political laundry it uncovers is voluminous but, as Sneyd argues, must be aired in the interests of sustainability and development.

A fast-paced account of the year Clara Parkes spent transforming a 676-pound bale of fleece into saleable yarn, and the people and vanishing industry she discovered along the way  Join Clara Parkes on a cross-country adventure and meet a cast of characters that includes the shepherds, dyers, and countless workers without whom our knitting needles would be empty, our mills idle, and our feet woefully cold. Travel the country with her as she meets a flock of Saxon Merino sheep in upstate New York, tours a scouring plant in Texas, visits a steamy Maine dyehouse, helps sort freshly shorn wool on a working farm, and learns how wool fleece is measured, baled, shipped, and turned into skeins.  In pursuit of the perfect yarn, Parkes describes a brush with the dangers of opening a bale (they can explode), and her adventures from Maine to Wisconsin (“the most knitterly state�) and back again; along the way, she presents a behind-the-scenes look at the spinners, scourers, genius inventors, and crazy-complex mill machines that populate the yarn-making industry. By the end of the book, you’ll be ready to set aside the backyard chickens and add a flock of sheep instead. Simply put, no other book exists that explores American culture through the lens of wool.

In this book, Nina Sylvanus tells a captivating story of global trade and cross-cultural aesthetics in West Africa, showing how a group of Togolese women through the making and circulation of wax cloth became influential agents of taste and history. Traveling deep into the shifting terrain of textile manufacture, design, and trade, she follows wax cloth around the world and through time to unveil its critical role in colonial and postcolonial patterns of exchange and value production. Sylvanus brings wax cloth's unique and complex history to light: born as a nineteenth-century Dutch colonial effort to copy Javanese batik cloth for Southeast Asian markets, it was reborn as a status marker that has dominated the visual economy of West African markets. Although most wax cloth is produced in China today, it continues to be central to the expression of West African women's identity and power. As Sylvanus shows, wax cloth expresses more than this global motion of goods, capital, aesthetics, and labor it is a form of archive where intimate and national memories are stored, always ready to be reanimated by human touch. By uncovering this crucial aspect of West African material culture, she enriches our understanding of global trade, the mutual negotiations that drive it, and the how these create different forms of agency and subjectivity.

Fashion studies is a burgeoning field that often highlights the contributions of genius designers and high-profile brands with little reference to what goes on behind the scenes in the supply chain. This book pulls back the curtain on the global fashion system of the past 200 years to examine the relationship between the textile mills of Yorkshire - the firms that provided the entire Western world with warm wool fabrics - and their customers. It is a microhistory of a single firm, Abraham Moon and Sons Ltd, that sheds light on important macro questions about British industry, government policies on international trade, the role of multi-generational family firms and the place of design and innovation in business strategy. It is the first book to connect Yorkshire tweeds to the fashion system. Written in lively, accessible prose, this book will appeal to anyone who works in fashion or who wears fashion. There is nothing like it - and it will raise the bar for historical studies of global fashion. Here you'll find intriguing stories about a tweed theft from the Leeds Coloured Cloth Hall, debates on tariffs and global trade, the battle against synthetic fibres and the reinvention of British tweeds around heritage marketing. You won't be bored. -- .

Water in Textiles and Apparel: Consumption, Footprint, and Life Cycle Assessment provides a thorough analysis of one of the most urgent issues facing the textiles industry. As water is essential to the textile production system, and as availability of water is reduced due to natural and anthropogenic factors, the industry must respond. With a thorough treatment of both life cycle assessment and water footprint perspectives, this book provides practical strategies for responsible water use across the textile supply chain. Readers will learn essential information from research and industry case studies that will help them understand the textile industry's role in this issue.

Whether we are out on the streets or between the sheets, cotton is our constant companion. But behind this ubiquitous fibre prized for its softness lies a darker story of exploitation and hardship. In this penetrating analysis, Adam Sneyd explores the power politics that envelope cotton as major corporate players and countries across Africa, Asia and the Americas compete to control it. In the aftermath of sweatshop scandal exposes and factory collapse disasters, merchants and retailers have called for better cotton farming practices. But in seeking to prevent the next transnational media circus, will companies simply end up cementing business-as-usual? Corporate public relations strategy now competes directly with the voices of an alternative global community that seeks to fundamentally transform the way that cotton is farmed. Yet these demands for cotton to work better for people and the planet have flown under the radar as media attention has focused instead on farmer subsidies and prices. From the local to the global, this book takes the reader on an illuminating journey through the multifaceted and often grubby politics of the fluffy white stuff in the world economy. The pile of political laundry it uncovers is voluminous but, as Sneyd argues, must be aired in the interests of sustainability and development.

For centuries, most textile manufacturing relied on people working in their own homes. All that changed in 1761 when Richard Arkwright began construction of the first water-powered cotton mill in Derbyshire.The complex woollen industry was transformed as mills spread cross the north of England and into Scotland, with tasks taken out of the cottage and into the factory. This informative guide tracks the development of the textile manufacturing industry, from industrial power looms meeting with Luddite resistance, to the distinctive silk weaving workrooms.Mill towns sprung up around places of work, including special apprentice houses for children. Conditions were harsh and often dangerous, both in the mills and in woollen towns living under permanent palls of smoke. Packed with photographs and illustrations, this is a classic Pitkin guide to the everyday lives of the workers in this mills and towns, from their work to their time off.There was a time when Britain sent textiles around the world: this is the story of the workforce, mainly women and children, who made this possible - and created the factory age.Includes a list of mills, museums and visitor centres to visit.

Providing detailed analysis of the thermal comfort assessment of clothing as the basis for developing standards, this book discusses the thermal protective role of clothing as a way of modelling heat transfer from the body, general thermal regulation of humans, and the importance of globally accepted test methods and standards to improve quality. New materials and discoveries in the study of thermal comfort necessitate the need for standard improvements and update. The development of international standards and the unification of testing methods is of crucial significance to ensure cost reduction and health protection. The book promotes instruments, methods, implementation of unified specifications, and the definition of standards so that a clear quality management system can be established, for both production systems and testing methods. It discusses standards in ergonomics of the thermal environment, clothing thermal characteristics, and subjective assessment of thermal comfort, which allows for systematic control of the measuring methods and the services and final products that are distributed on the global market. This book is aimed at industry professionals, researchers, and advanced students working in textile and clothing engineering, comfort testing, and ergonomics.

Clothing for Children and Teenagers: Anthropometry, Sizing and Fit addresses the complexities of developing size specifications for clothing aimed at seven to seventeen year olds. Children and teenagers experience rapid physical growth and alterations in body shape as they develop-changes that pose significant challenges in creating apparel sizing systems. The book begins by introducing the principles of apparel fit and sizing systems. Drawing on the author's own fieldwork, it goes on to discuss methods of conducting anthropometric surveys in children and teenagers, and techniques for analyzing the resulting data in order to produce successful sizing systems.

Performance Testing of Textiles: Methods, Technology and Applications examines the developed and established methodology for testing performance textiles, also summarizing the material properties for advanced applications. This book emphasizes reproducible tests using commonly used experimental methods reported in scientific literature and internationally recognized testing standards to quantify textile material properties and performance. After an introductory explanation of key fiber and textile properties and testing methods, the book summarizes electronic testing theories, technologies, and instrumentation for performance textiles. Also covered are aspects of military textile, medical textile, sportswear, smart composites, and wearable textiles which, as examples, present the latest research and results related to performance textile testing and applications.

Information Systems for the Fashion and Apparel Industry brings together trends and developments in fashion information systems, industrial case-studies, and insights from an international team of authors. The fashion and apparel industry is fast-growing and highly influential. Computerized information systems are essential to support fashion business operations and recent developments in social media, mobile commerce models, radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies, and ERP systems are all driving innovative business measures in the industry. After an introductory chapter outlining key decision points and information requirements in fast fashion supply chains, Part One focuses on the principles of fashion information systems, with chapters covering how decision making in the apparel supply chains can be improved through the use of fuzzy logic, RFID technologies, evolutionary optimization techniques, and artificial neural networks. Part Two then reviews the range of applications for information systems in the fashion and apparel industry to improve customer choice, aid design, implement intelligent forecasting and procurement systems, and manage inventory and returns.

Advances in Women's Intimate Apparel Technology discusses the design and manufacture of intimate apparel and how the industry is increasingly embracing novel materials, new technologies, and innovations in sizing and fit. The book reviews the ways in which new materials and methods are improving the range, function, and quality of intimate apparel, with particular focus on brassiere design. Part One introduces the advanced materials used for intimate apparel, including novel fabrics and dyes and finishes, along with materials for wiring and embellishments. Part Two discusses the role of seamless technology in intimate apparel production, covering lamination, moulding, and seamless knitting. Finally, Part Three reviews advances in design, fit, and performance.

Advances in Technical Nonwovens presents the latest information on the nonwovens industry, a dynamic and fast-growing industry with recent technological innovations that are leading to the development of novel end-use applications. The book reviews key developments in technical nonwoven manufacturing, specialist materials, and applications, with Part One covering important developments in materials and manufacturing technologies, including chapters devoted to fibers for technical nonwovens, the use of green recycled and biopolymer materials, and the application of nanofibres. The testing of nonwoven properties and the specialist area of composite nonwovens are also reviewed, with Part Two offering a detailed and wide-ranging overview of the many applications of technical nonwovens that includes chapters on automotive textiles, filtration, energy applications, geo- and agrotextiles, construction, furnishing, packaging and medical and hygiene products.

Sustainability is an issue that increasingly concerns all those involved in the apparel industry, including textile manufacturers, apparel designers, retailers and consumers. This important book covers recent advances and novel technologies in the key areas of production, processing and recycling of apparel. Part One addresses sustainable finishing and dyeing processes for textiles. The first two chapters concentrate on the environmental impact of fabric finishing, including water consumption, emissions and waste management. Further chapters focus on plasma and enzymatic treatments for sustainable textile processing, and the potential for improving the sustainability of dyeing technologies. Part Two covers issues of design, retail and recycling, and includes discussions of public attitudes towards sustainability in fashion, methods of measuring apparel sustainability and social trends in the re-use of apparel.

This seminal text demystifies all the terminology around working with textiles today, providing definitions of processes, techniques, features, and even some historical terms that you need to know. The dictionary now includes coverage of sustainability, smart materials and biobased textiles, intelligent and 3D manufacturing, new technologies, and processes. Entries cover everything from fibers, fabrics, laws and regulations affecting textile materials and processing, inventors of textile technology, and business and trade terms relevant to textiles. Highly illustrated with over 400 images, entries include pronunciation, derivation, definition, and uses.

Archaeologists and textile historians bring together 16 papers to investigate the production, trade and consumption of textiles in Scandinavia and across parts of northern and Mediterranean Europe throughout the medieval period. Archaeological evidence is used to demonstrate the existence or otherwise of international trade and to examine the physical characteristics of textiles and their distribution in order to understand who was producing, using and trading them and what they were being used for. Historical evidence, mainly textual, is employed to link textile names to places, numbers and prices and thus provide an appreciation of changing economics, patterns of distribution and the organisation of trade. Different types and qualities of cloths are discussed and the social implications of their production and import/export considered against a developing background of urbanism and increasing commercial wealth.