The Nature of Fashion: A Botanical Story of Our Material Lives

If plants have shaped fashion’s past, couldn’t they hold the secret to its future? Vivid, celebratory, impassioned and angry, The Nature of Fashion is an epic sweep through the history of how we learned to create clothing with plants, revealing how textiles have transformed the human world and our natural landscape. More than just a story about plant-based fashion, The Nature of Fashion chronicles the plant stewards, obsessives, innovators and profiteers who have shaped what we wear. It is about the clash of worlds, voracious exploitation and silenced voices; about devotion, passion, blindness, idealism, greed and how clothing has separated us from nature. Told through intimate vignettes into this past, each person, people group, plant and place is a thread in the fabric of the book, forging connections across place and time. And like weaving, as the story strands weave in and out, the pattern slowly emerges. As the centuries unfold, we meet plants from every continent and understand the human stories of origin, culture and community. We see people and countries interact through trade, conflict, human and land exploitation and the age-old struggle for riches and power. The stories of yesterday find their echoes in today. In every culture and every place, each plant is part of an ecosystem, and we see how the choices we once made shape landscapes and economies today. Amidst human folly shine strands of hope and resilience, cultures that have maintained their textile traditions, human artistry that works in rhythm with the natural world and innovators who are finding new ways to produce fibres and dyes. For thousands of years our clothes have been made by working with nature, not against it. Fashion is at a turning point – to look forward, we need to look back.