*Covid-19 Update: Although our physical space has temporarily closed, the Library will continue with its Evening with an Author programming during the period of confinement. Our events will continue to be free and open to the public, via Zoom. We have moved the events up, to begin at 17h00 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up. *This event will be streamed via Facebook Live–no sign up is required. Simply head directly to our Facebook page to tune in at 17h00 on Wednesday 20 May 2020 (video will also be available after the event)!

A virtual book talk by New York Times bestselling author and journalist Dana Thomas, author of Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes.

Dana’s account investigates the damage wrought by the colossal clothing industry – and the grassroots, high-tech, international movement fighting to reform it. Tune in to hear more about the book and how Dana’s views have developed in the current climate.

In Fashionopolis, Dana Thomas surveys the environmental and human cost of a globalized, profit-hungry supply chain: sweatshop labour, ecological degradation, overconsumption, waste and creative exhaustion. As awareness of the damage inflicted on the planet by globalisation and consumerism increases, Fashionopolis investigates the way that the clothing industry has become environmentally and ethically unsustainable.

But Fashionopolis also documents renewal, and how technology and purpose are changing how we buy and produce clothes: from 3D printing to clean denim processing, from smart manufacturing to hyperlocalism, from the creation of truly circular fabrics to lab-grown leather. We have all been casual about how we get dressed. Fashionopolis is the first comprehensive look at how to change.

Dana is the author of Gods and Kings and the New York Times bestseller”Deluxe. She began her career writing for the Style section of The Washington Post, and she has served as a cultural and fashion correspondent for Newsweek in Paris. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times Style section and has written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and Architectural Digest. In 2016, the French Minister of Culture named Thomas a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.