Virginia Postrel — How Do Textiles Shape Society?

Alex Aragona speaks with Virginia Postrel as she explores how her newest book traces how textiles shaped our modern societies.

References from Episode 66 with Virginia Postrel

• Virgina Postrel is the author of The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion; The Substance of Style: How The Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness; The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress, and The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World, featuring the majority of this episode’s quotes and chapter references. All titles are available for order on Amazon (book titles are hyperlinked).
• Steve Horwitz’s book, Hayek's Modern Family: Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of Social Institutions, commentates gender roles over time and can be purchased from Amazon Canada at this link.
• Virginia mention’s David Friedman’s study on Medieval Iceland’s cloth currency and can be read here.
• John Styles, a historian of the industrial revolution, noted how Northern Italy outnumbered Lanarkshire’s water-powered factories in his work, Fashion, Textiles and the Origins of Industrial Revolution, available at this link.
• You can learn more about the Caraglio silk-throwing mill in Piedmont, Italy that Virgina recommends in the podcast at this link.