"A moving and eye-opening look at the story of manufacturing in America, whether it can ever successfully return to our shores, and why our nation depends on it, told through the experience of one young couple in Maine as they attempt to rebuild a lost industry, ethically. From the best-selling author of Into the Raging Sea"--from Amazon.com.

You give an old shirt or dress to a charity. Then, you forget all about it. But - without knowing it - you have had a huge impact on people you don't know, people throughout the world; and that impact is not all good. By following the strange, colorful, unpredictable voyage of one second hand shirt, Abloni plunges us into the huge worldwide business of second hand clothes.

"Fashion is much more than what we wear. In fact, designing, fabricating, and styling clothes is an art form that relies on up-to-the-minute technology. Inventions in Fashion: From Rawhide to Rayon explores the trajectory of fashion from the first clothing worn by primitive humans to scientifically engineered fabrics. The book examines the development of rawhide, blue jeans, sewing machines, and rayon in chronological order. These inventions have...

Weaving the Future is a video portrait of a unique indigenous community living in the Andean highlands of northern Ecuador. The story of the Otavalo Indians is not a stereotypical tale of "isolated people struggling to survive."

The killer bargain referred to by this hard-hitting documentary's title is the availability of cheap consumer goods, imported by Western companies, whose prices don't reflect the actual human and environmental costs associated with their production in the developing world. Consumers remain largely unaware of the conditions under which the goods they buy are produced; this film makes those connections shockingly clear. While some retailers and manufacturers...

This film documents the lives of Quechua people who live around Ausangate, a sacred peak in southeastern Peru. It is based on anthropological research conducted over twenty years and reveals how the weavers make textiles encoded with symbolic images that reinforce ancestral beliefs during rituals and in everyday life. Four Quechua people's stories are told against a backdrop of high Andean lakes and mountains showing a harsh existence possible only...

After a quarter century of struggle, mill workers in Kannapolis, North Carolina won the single largest industrial union victory in the history of the South. Like most other industries in the South, Cannon Mills was sharply segregated until the 1960s and employment opportunities for African-Americans were limited to janitorial positions and other maintenance-type tasks outside the mills. As well, municipal services, the newspaper and even the police...

Shift your attention from Britain to the United States, where a class of mobile and educated entrepreneurs stood poised to build an industrial economy. This episode introduces you to the world of American manufacturing. Learn about Francis Cabot Lowell and Eli Whitney, early innovators in the US textile industry.

Discover how the melding of Spanish Islamic culture and medieval Christian ideas produced dazzling masterpieces of architecture. Travel to the times of king Alfonso the Wise, whose rich court life fostered scholarship and medicine, as well as courtly entertainments such as music, sports, and bullfighting. Learn about the flourishing of trade, highlighting the complex wool and textile industry.