OUT NOW: Issue 131, Flow

A little over a century ago, the notion of abundant clean water flowing from a tap was unimaginable to many. Today, it is so embedded in daily life that it goes unnoticed. This quiet ubiquity has fostered a culture of superabundance – the illusion that natural resources will replenish themselves indefinitely – nowhere more so than within textiles, where water remains the invisible yet essential ingredient at almost every stage of production.

Illustration by Sarah Young

From fibre to finished cloth, water underpins the entire process. Silk cocoons are submerged to soften the sericin that binds their filaments, allowing them to be reeled. Cotton cultivation relies heavily on irrigation; wool is scoured before carding; flax, hemp, and jute are retted to break down pectins and release their fibres. Cloth is fulled, dyed, washed, worn, and washed again. Each stage draws on water resources, contributing to the textile industry’s position as one of the world’s largest protagonists of water pollution.

Clovelly Herring Festival 2025. Photos: Tessa Bunney

In this issue, we consider water – the sacred solvent – and explore its profound entanglement with textiles. While 97 percent of the Earth’s water is saline, salt water presents particular challenges for cloth. Salt, sun, and abrasion accelerate the degradation of fibres, a reality long understood by coastal communities.

Coloured postcard of the Newhaven fishwives from 1904-07. Courtesy of the Estate of Peter Stubbs.

The fishwives of Newhaven adapted their dress to withstand these harsh conditions. Though the fishing industry has largely receded, traditions endure. At the annual Clovelly Herring Festival in Devon, England, textile practitioners gather to preserve and reinterpret maritime craft. Along the shore, contemporary designers draw inspiration from beachcombed seaweed, captivated by its form, tactility, and latent potential as a material.

Brigitte Singh’s water filtration system in her studio garden in Amber, Jaipur. Photos: Raghav Pasricha

Water is not only a medium of making but also a site of contestation. As Robert Macfarlane argues in Is a River Alive?, rivers are not passive resources but living systems deserving of legal and cultural recognition. Freshwater – so scarce in global terms – has historically sustained centres of textile production from Belgium’s linen industry and England’s woollen mills to India’s celebrated cotton-dyeing traditions. Yet these same waterways have borne the burden of industrial waste and ecological neglect. Encouragingly, a new generation of makers are rethinking sustainable practice. Across India, textile printers have implemented rainwater harvesting and greywater filtration systems.

Above: Kashmir Loom pamposh shawl. Handwoven pashmina with zari threads. Photo: Kashmir Loom. Below: Injiri Spring/Summer 2025 Notes of Fragrance collection. See end notes for credits.

In the brackish backwaters of Kerala, where lagoons and canals run parallel to the Arabian Sea, water sustains both ecology and craft. Here, the lotus – sacred to Hindu and Buddhist traditions – holds symbolic significance while also being a source of fibre. Among these waterways, men loiter, dressed in fluid, undyed cotton lungis, their movements echoing the rhythms of the water itself.

Powdered Turmeric root (Curcuma longa), used in Ayurvedic dyes. Photo: Alamy

Fluidity in textiles extends beyond material process into the realm of expression. Fabrics cut on the bias move with the body, resisting rigidity. They suggest a way of being that is adaptive, responsive, and open. In this convergence of self-care, health, and well-being, hand-dyed cloth becomes both medium and metaphor: a tactile articulation of identity, transition, and continuity. And so, as the heat of summer rises and you reach instinctively for a cloth to wipe your brow, spare a thought for the water it holds within its fibres – the unseen resource that has shaped its journey, and continues to shape our world.

Polly Leonard, Founder

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Further Information:

Selvedge Issue 131, Flow, is available now.

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Image Credits:

Lead: Cover image: Injiri Spring/Summer 2026 collection. Creative direction: Chinar Farooqui. Photographer: Gourab Ganguli. Model: Veronica Ruby. Makeup and hair: David John Cardoz.

All further images as credited in captions.