Catherine Harper – författare

Exploring the intersection between traditional textile crafts and modern fashion practices, this book brings together leading scholars and practitioners to delve into how ancient techniques, designs and cultural heritage can inform and inspire sustainable innovation in the contemporary fashion industry. From revitalising unprotected crafts to integrating cultural symbols into modern apparel, the book provides a comprehensive look at how fashion can serve as a tool for preservation and progress.Each chapter presents case studies and practical examples from India and the Middle East, ranging from using eco-friendly materials and zero-waste practices to empowering marginalised communities through craft. This book is designed to equip readers with actionable insights, showcasing how tradition and innovation can create a more sustainable and equitable future for fashion.Drawing from a rich tapestry of interdisciplinary perspectives, Cultural Heritage in the Fashion Industry offers valuable insights for scholars of fashion and textiles, cultural studies, and anthropology in particular.

The Stained and Bloodied Cloths of Ireland presents a textiles and material culture view of Irish shame, oppression, morality and repression.Ireland – North and South – has sustained significant change in the last 100 years, accelerating at the end of the 20th century with the legalization of contraception, divorce, gay marriage, the end of the ‘Troubles’, and freedom to choose abortion and reproductive autonomy. In parallel to this, troubling instances of abuse, repression and cruelty have come to light through a series of scandals. These included the exploitation of unmarried mothers as unpaid labour in laundries, the deaths of women and babies in mishandled miscarriages, the unhealthy entanglement of Church and State, and the intolerance shown to 'visible Irish and immigrant minorities' in the so-called ‘land of a thousand welcomes’.This collection of specially commissioned essays tells the stories of cloth, clothing, textiles and materials that have been actually or symbolically stained by blood or other bodily fluids in Ireland’s last 100 years. By focusing on the role of these materials in the events and experiences of shame, oppression, morality and repression, the book ‘lances the boil’ of Irish social history, celebrating the movement of the island of Ireland into post-Church, post-conflict, post-nostalgia modernity that, while a painful transition, is a vital part of coming to terms with its past and looking to its future.

Intersex' is the condition whereby an individual is born with biological features that are simultaneously perceived as male and female. Ranging from the ambiguous genitalia of the true 'hermaphrodite' to the 'mildly or internally intersexed', the condition may be as common as cleft palate. Like cleft palate, it is hidden and surgically altered, but for very different reasons. This important book draws heavily on the personal testimony of intersexed individuals, their loved ones, and medical carers. The impact of early sex-assignment surgery on an individual's later life is examined within the context of ethical and clinical questions. Harper challenges the conventional and radical 'treatment' of intersexuality through non-consensual infant sex-assignment surgery. In doing so she exposes powerful myths, taboos, and constructions of gender - the perfect phallus, a bi-polar model of gender and the infallibility of medical decisions. Handling sensitive material with care, this book deepens our understanding of a condition that has itself only been medically understood in recent years.