It's 1985. Nike is hoping to finally get a foot into the world of basketball. They're gearing up for a new release of basketball boots that 21-year-old rookie Michael Jordan wears during a pre-season match for the Chicago Bulls. The National Ba

Ray-Ban

Aug 29th, 2022 15m 5s

In 1920, during a record-breaking test flight in a single-engine fighter plane, things almost went fatally wrong for the pilot Major Rudolph 'Shorty' Schroeder. He lost consciousness but came round just in time to land at McCook Airport in Ohio

Miniskirt

Aug 29th, 2022 15m 32s

It's 1965 and London is about to become the capital of cool. Designer Mary Quant is watching the fashionable girls of Chelsea go by from the window of her shop, Bazaar. Their hemlines seem to be getting shorter and shorter. Inspired, Mary gets

Fisherman Sweater

Aug 29th, 2022 14m 8s

Fisherman sweaters have been part of fishing communities around the world for centuries. They're knitted with wool, often with unique and intricate designs, and can take more than a hundred hours to make.In episode seven of Torn, Gus Casely-Hay

Readymade Suit

Aug 29th, 2022 14m 16s

It's 1848 and a London-based company is changing the way that clothes are made and sold. E Moses and Son operate out of striking buildings across the capital. Men from all points of the compass are converging on the store with one thing in mind

Viscose Rayon

Aug 22nd, 2022 14m 19s

It's 1924 and the young Russian graduate Alexis Sommaripa, like so many migrants to the United States in the period, is looking for something new. He takes a job with a company that’s been in the viscose rayon business for about five years but

Mauve Mania

Aug 22nd, 2022 14m

It’s 1856 in London, and 18-year-old William Perkin is in the search for a cure to malaria when he stumbles upon something else. At the bottom of his test tube he sees a reddish lump. He dips cloth into it and discovers a purple dye. He becomes

Wax Print

Aug 22nd, 2022 14m 29s

The story of wax print fabric begins not in Africa where the fabric is adored today, but on the island of Java in Indonesia. That’s because, in the 18th century, a Dutch entrepreneur Pieter Fentener van Vlissingen received a curious piece of cl

Indian chintz dress

Aug 22nd, 2022 15m 24s

It's 1786 in Alexandria, Virginia. An argument breaks out at the market between a black woman enslaved on George Washington’s plantation and a white woman who believes she has stolen her dress made of fine Indian chintz fabric. What the encount

Calico cotton

Aug 22nd, 2022 14m 56s

Gus Casely-Hayford tells the story of how calico cotton first grown in India gave rise to the global trade of a fabric that is both contentious and revolutionary.It’s 1719 and the vitriolic words of weaver-turned-activist Claudius Rey penned in

Introducing Torn

Aug 15th, 2022 3m

Gus Casely-Hayford unpicks the hidden histories behind what we wear by exploring 10 key moments in fashion spanning the globe and five centuries. From the start of the global trade in cotton, to the accidental invention of artificial dyes to Ni

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