Good morning - it's me, Saxey, focusing on textiles! I've got some great material. And some fascinating threads.

Sorry. 

First up, not all cotton is white cotton, and some women work to preserve its multicoloured variety. It feels like a sad giant metaphor that in both these stories the multicoloured cotton is threatened because it might contaminate the white cotton crop.

Sally Fox in California:

"And that’s how it was that I became fixated. I would never spin or weave anything dyed, only natural colors.” This discovery led Fox to a life-long pursuit to secure natural fibers, wherever they came from—whether it was dogs from the grooming station or musk-ox hair she used to gather from the San Francisco Zoo.

https://civileats.com/2018/08/30/mee-the-fanatic-breeding-colored-cotton-growing-heirloom-wheat-and-building-soil-carbon/ 

Yolanda Contreras, in Peru:

When we started looking for wild cotton seeds, we realized there were almost none left – we looked in every house, on every plot of land, but, no one had any seeds. We eventually found some buried in pillows…

https://www.thegef.org/news/threads-life-women-restoring-wild-cotton-species-and-indigenous-practices-peru

Next, dive into this story which begins like an epic fantasy novel, and continues to bewilder.

Each spring, under the cover of darkness and guarded by members of the Italian Coast Guard, 62-year-old Chiara Vigo slips on a white tunic, recites a prayer and plunges headfirst into the crystalline sea off the tiny Sardinian island of Sant’Antioco. Using the moonlight to guide her, Vigo descends up to 15m below the surface to reach a series of secluded underwater coves and grassy lagoons that the women in her family have kept secret for the past 24 generations.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170906-the-last-surviving-sea-silk-seamstress

And to increase your disorientation, let's zoom from the smallest and oldest weaving imaginable, to a futuristic industry - fibres made from pineapple leftovers. 

When she first started looking for an alternative to leather, Hijosa wanted the new product to look like the one it was replacing. Now, however, she says: “I am not really happy if it looks like leather because it has to start looking [like] itself.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/21/wearable-pineapple-leather-alternative 

I first heard about the versatile fruity Piñatex this summer, at a panel on SciFi clothing which also praised mushroom leather and looked forward to hag fish slime replacing nylon. Tactile Trends is a site by designer Rachel Higginbottom which keeps an eye on techno-fabrics while being visually sumptuous. In honour of Chiara Vigo the sea-silk seamstress, here's a marine-themed mood board which I found very soothing.

For our textile trend story, 'The Mariners Muse' we look at the world through the eyes of a seafaring mariner and his castaway muse. As they travel the oceans together braving the elements, their voyage of discovery reveals textural wonderment, ship wrecked beauty and curious beach finds.

http://www.tactiletrends.com/home/aw18-textile-trend-story-mariners-muse 

Whatever you're wearing, enjoy your weekend!

S