Not everything about wool is warm and fuzzy.

Wool, for millennia the cold climate textile fiber, has a long relationship to war, both in terms of supporting it and causing it. Wool’s strategic value in wartime, a position it gained over centuries, and contrived shortages of same in the 20th century, have helped drive consumers’ transition to the synthetic fibers that have enabled fast fashion, and as both fiber and cloth are global contemporary pollutants.

Fleeced argues that the 19th century advent of southern hemisphere large scale sheep pastoralism and northern hemisphere industrialization of the woolen textile industry allowed - at least in part - the huge armies of the 20th century to exist. World War I represented a fundamental shift in the scale of armies and the kind of wars they fought. Demand for wool to outfit the tens of millions of men and women involved in fighting the war or supporting those who did grew way beyond what could be accommodated by any nation’s normal supply. The contrived wool shortages of this war had a lasting impact - nations subject to supply chain difficulties began the search for substitutes that led first to the semi-synthetic rayon, and ultimately to the plastic fibers such as polyester and acrylic that dominate today’s world of fast fashion.

Each chapter of Fleeced begins with a surprising object, document or image that takes us into this fascinating and previously untold history. Change is not necessarily progress.

Fleeced explains how competition for wool in wartime helped create our current unsustainable and environmentally disastrous reliance on petrochemical fibers.

Madelyn Shaw is curator and author specializing in the exploration of American culture and history, and its international connections, through textiles and dress. She has held curatorial and administrative positions at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution; the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design; New Bedford Whaling Museum; The Textile Museum, Washington DC; and the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, NYC.

Trish FitzSimons is adjunct professor at the Griffith Film School, Griffith University, Brisbane Australia. She is descended on her mother’s side from at least six generations of male wool buyers. Her grandfather’s letters to his parents 1904-1907 as he learned the wool trade and associated World War I documents are a key impetus to and resource for this project. She is a documentary filmmaker and exhibition curator with a passion for social and cultural history.

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