At last, a different book was just published about the global textile and apparel trade. For the first time, "Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade” offers a human and sensible approach to an increasingly global business through a series of remarkably well-written portraits of professionals. The book by author Rachel Louise Snyder also offers a rare opportunity to grasp the new trends in the global textile village with emerging environmental and labor issues.

There were many academic reports and books about global textile and apparel trade until now, but they usually consisted of data, tables and cold analysis (like EmergingTextiles.com, we confess), rather than sewn with feelings and sentiments.

"Fugitive Denim" is probably the first human -call it “character-driven”- and sensitive approach to the business, offering a long series of portraits of professionals plunged into the vast movement of textile globalization.

Rachel Louise Snyder, the author of "Fugitive Denim", traveled from New York to Phnom-Penh, from Azerbaijan to Shenzhen, from Northern Italy to Paris in order to meet the people in the industry rather than analyzing what is perhaps the most complex trade system on the planet.

Frustration and enthusiasm
Such a modest approach offers a rare opportunity to grasp the essence of how our global textile village evolved over the past thirty years.

Frustration, anxiety, national pride and fear of foreign competition are shared by professionals around the world, as different as an Azeri cotton specialist in Baku or a denim fabric designer in Lombardy.

But Snyder's book is also full of enthusiasm for creative design and technical details, and offers a rare and unexpected real sense of humor.

Although the book focuses on the denim business, Snyder actually offers a comprehensive view of the whole textile and apparel trade.

More importantly, it explains how future trends in this business may be dominated by environmental and labor issues.

About regulations, also
The European Reach program already aims at limiting the use of dangerous chemical products in dyeing and finishing while in Cambodia the International Labour Organisation (I.L.O.) has monitored apparel factories for years in order to eradicate abuses under the guise of trade incentives.

The book is also about imposing new technical regulations, controlling plants and modifying rules of origin and trade agreements.

While lengthy, the book could have included a chapter about India (which is strangely forgotten), it is full of typical American ingenuity but "Fugitive Denim" could not have been more interesting.