by Bill Loftus
In the world of textiles, teachers everywhere face a challenge that circles the world. Centuries of tradition collide with a bursting global economy, requiring high school and university students to grasp issues and cultures far beyond their own borders.
For northern Idaho, India plays a role as a clothing manufacturer that helped Sandpoint-based retailer Coldwater Creek top $1 billion in sales last year.
Sandra Evenson makes a block print
on a cotton fabric in a northwestern India
studio famous for double-sided block printing.
Sandra Evenson, University of Idaho associate professor of textiles, made Coldwater Creek’s office in Gurgoan one of her first stops during her trip to India as a member of a Fulbright-Hays study tour. The tour drew together high school teachers and college professors nationwide.
Evenson has a long-standing connection with India and its textile industry. The month-long trip during December 2006 and January 2007 was her fourth since graduate school.
She found this experience unparalleled because of the Fulbright program’s prestige. “Everywhere we went, people went out of their way to open doors and show us whatever we wanted to see.”
Most impressive to Evenson are efforts by local Indian non-profits to help village women use their generations-old sewing skills in new more marketable ways.
“We visited villages in the Kutch region where women used to spend years embroidering textiles for their own dowries. Headmen now discourage that time-consuming effort, encouraging them to embroider for profit.
Now women, often with husbands who are alcoholic or unemployed, can better help themselves and their families. They can focus on pre-natal care and good nutrition for children—all things our family and consumer sciences studies support.”
In some villages, Evenson felt almost guilty buying items for her teaching collection: “Some of these pieces are so beautiful and so old that it seemed like they belonged in a museum.”
Tradition can limit opportunities or become an advantage. While fast food is a cultural norm in the United States, Evenson sees India sidestepping the rush to fast food and its accompanying epidemic of obesity.
“I’m encouraged that this sense of tradition remains the fabric of Indian life,” says Evenson who hopes to organize a similar two-week tour in 2009 to immerse Idaho students in Indian culture through textiles.
See the latest fashions for 20-something
Indian women in Globus, an important
retailer in Mumbai (formerly Bombay).
Related stories: See textile trends overview, alum Lori Wahl's adventures as a designer , or Nicole Thiel's trip to India.
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