‘A  colourful and exciting overview of textiles today, which does not just look forward, but also sideways in recognition of our cultural and historical connection to the fabric of our lives’ – Embroidery

'This fresh sourcebook of original and inspiring designs will appeal to all designers and anyone with an interest in textiles' - New Design

‘Beautifully and profusely illustrated … an excellent introduction’ – Museum Anthropology Review

The diversity of the textile world makes it both exciting and provocative as it brings together a wide range of otherwise fragmented perspectives.

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Textiles owe their development to religion, commerce, exchange and travel, and their vibrant and creative preservation to tenacious regionalism. Artists and designers from India, Mali, Madagascar, Morocco, Burkina Faso and Nigeria have reinvigorated art and fashion by using the fabrics and graphic elements they find on the streets of London, Paris and New York and other cities.

Extraordinary technological developments, from colour-changing, light-sensitive camouflage to emergency shelters of cement-impregnated fabric bonded to an inflatable plastic, are included here alongside the simply beautiful, such as Eley Kishimoto’s patterns that point to the historical exchange of ideas between the East and the West, or the astonishing colour transmutations of Morphotex.

A former design consultant, Chloë Colchester received a doctorate in anthropology for her research into Fijian barkcloth and was a research associate at University College London where she studied contemporary transformations of Polynesian cloth traditions. She is the author of The New Textiles: Trends and Traditions and Clothing the Pacific.

USA customers please note that this book is also available from our USA website

Also of interest
The Fashion Designer's Textile Directory
Techno Textiles 2: Revolutionary Fabrics for Fashion and Design
Ultra Materials: How Materials Innovation is Changing the World
World Textiles: A Concise History
Textiles: The Whole Story – Uses · Meanings · Significance