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Here’s What’s Happening During September’s New York Textile Month

Parsons and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum have teamed up with renowned trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort to launch New York Textile Month, a 30-day extravaganza that showcases textile creativity and addresses textile awareness, this September.

Starting next month, locals and insiders alike will have the opportunity to speak up about the American textile industry’s rebirth and the greater global concern about textile origins. Despite today’s emerging textile technologies, people are coming together to discuss textile heritage and how future generations can preserve historic artisan processes without compromising digital evolution.

“At this time of decline we simultaneously experience a return of the interest in textiles and their cultural expressions. Fashion design starts to focus on fabric, interior design brings back upholstery and art students reach out to the loom. There is a renewed interest in material processes and an urgency to understand what fabric is made of,” Edelkoort said.

New York Textile Month will kick off with “Talent,” an art and design student exhibition on Governors’ Island which will feature work from eight European and American schools, including Central Saint Martins and Pratt Institute. “Talent” will be open on weekends from Sept. 1-18.

Additional expos, seminars and workshops will be held in the New York City area throughout the month-long celebration. Local museums, including Brooklyn’s Wyckoff House Museum, will host textile artists that will explore the material’s history and contemporary culture. Other textile mavens, including Ethical Fashion Initiative founder Simone Cipriani, will host discussions about textile’s role in ethical supply chain solutions and new textile processes.

As textiles are at the forefront of major cultural and production changes, New York Textile Month provides a glimpse of what is to come, as well as what society can do to retain the materials’ artistic ancestry and presence on a global scale.