Textile Waste and the Catastrophe At Kantamanto Episode #59
Jo Andrews
Early this year there was a catastrophic fire at the world’s biggest market for selling and upcycling second-hand clothes. Kantamanto market, in Ghana’s capital Accra, was accidently set alight, and most of the small stalls in the retail part of the huge market burnt to the ground. Two people died, many were injured, and the livelihoods of thousands of people were destroyed, driving many of them into debt and desperation. But the impact of the fire spread much further than that.
Coupons for Clothes: A Wartime Idea Made New? Episode #58
Jo Andrews
Creativity and invention aren’t words often associated with hardship and suffering, but in the Second World War, women in many different countries, including America, Britain, Canada, and Australia faced with clothes rationing rose to the challenge in many different ways.
Those days are long past, but in an era of textile super-abundance, clothes coupons may well have something new to teach us about how we buy and use our clothes. Can clothes rationing cure us of an addiction to fast fashion and help solve the environmental crisis that it is causing?
Pleats Please: The Story of The World’s Oldest Fashion Technique : Episode #57
Jo Andrews
There’s a fashion technique that’s been in continuous use for over five thousand years – proof, if proof is needed, that there is nothing really new in fashion. We have tunics that survive from the time of the Pharaohs in Egypt that use it and you can see it still in the catwalk collections of today.
The Quilts That Hold The Heart of Hawai’i: Episode #56
Jo Andrews
What happens when one of the most traditional museums in the world decides to revolutionise the way it presents the story of the past? The answer is not only a riot of craft and colour, but a reminder of the crucial role of textiles in framing our cultures.
Tapestries for Troubled Times: Episode #55
Jo Andrews
The stitches of the Bayeux Tapestry fix the story of the Norman Conquest of England in our imaginations in an extraordinarily charismatic way. But nearly a thousand years later modern stitchers are picking up their needles to reframe their stories in just as powerful a fashion, showing that textiles can rewrite our histories.
Images from Haptic and Hue’s seventh season of podcasts