Connecting Threads

Connecting Threads is a born-digital interdisciplinary humanities project that explores the influence of under-represented actors in global fashion history. The project investigates the consumption of Indian and Indian-imitation fabrics by communities of the global south, amplifying the impacts of Indian producers and global south consumers on international networks of design, trade, and taste. The project, funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities, brings together original research on extant checked cottons in museum collections with contemporaneous images and related archives documenting their production and use as fashion articles in the global south. By connecting these objects, or ’threads,’ the platform will serve as a gateway to more and deeper explorations of the impact of south-to-south fashion networks on global history. This project, currently in its first phase, is a collaboration between scholars and curators at RRCHNM, University of Edinburgh, Victoria & Albert Museum, The Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Museum, and the University of Glasgow Archives.