PAST SPEAKER EVENT

Author Virginia Postrel Discusses her book “The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World.”

On Wednesday, October 13, 2021 at 6:00 p.m. at Revolution Mill in Greensboro.

Sponsored by White Oak Legacy Foundation and the Department of Consumer, Apparel, and Retail Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Textiles are one of humanity's oldest and most influential technologies, but nowadays most people take them for granted. 

Focusing on denim and drawing on her widely praised new book The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World, author Virginia Postrel will take us on a tour of some of the innovations -- in fiber, spinning, weaving, and dyeing -- that gave us today’s textile abundance and the ways textiles shaped civilization as we know it.

The talk will be in the same location as the White Oak Legacy Foundation’s new exhibit on indigo dyeing and denim innovation called “Innovations in Blue.”  This exhibit opened October 11 at Revolution Mill in Greensboro, N.C., and will be on display until March 30, 2022.

Virginia Postrel is a Los Angeles-based writer whose latest book is The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World. She is visiting fellow at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University and a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. Her previous books include The Power of Glamour, The Substance of Style, and The Future and Its Enemies. During her research for The Fabric of Civilization, she learned to weave and is now the program co-chair for the Southern California Handweavers' Guild. Visit her website at vpostrel.com.

White Oak Legacy Foundation is a Greensboro non-profit dedicated to the preservation of the Southern United States’ heritage of denim fabric manufacturing and blue jean production, focusing on education, history, production of authentic fabrics, and innovation.

UNCG’s Department of Consumer, Apparel, Retail Studies (CARS) educates students with an interest in fashion and the apparel industry. The CARS program prepares graduates to be industry-ready with the experience, knowledge and skills necessary for building successful careers. Recently celebrating 100 years as an academic program at UNCG, the CARS department has a legacy of graduating exceptional industry leaders, right here in Greensboro, N.C.