Putting On The Dog
Tags: Melissa Kwasny

Putting on the Dog explores the age-old relationship between humans and animals, providing fascinating details about the historic use of animals as clothing. In the exploratory spirit of The Orchid Thief and The Omnivore's Dilemma, Melissa Kwasny travels the globe gathering firsthand accounts of traditions and manufacturing methods, from aboriginal to modern, as she investigates the phenomenology of silk, skin, wool, feathers, and pearls, long coveted materials that even now are regarded as precious and luxurious. From brain-tanning of elk hide in Montana to the shearing of wild sheep off the coast of Maine, Kwasny investigates the cultural history of fashion, highlighting the people who are working toward preserving our relationship with animals both imaginatively and physically. Visiting current industrial manufacturers and meeting people who have spent their lives working with animals and subsisting on the materials they provide farmers, ranchers, tanners, weavers, shepherds, and artisans Kwasny examines historical rates of human consumption and overconsumption of these materials, as well as current efforts to mitigate environmental and ethical damage and move toward sustainability. Though Kwasny does consider concerns of animal rights groups, Putting on the Dog is not an anti-hunting or anti-trapping or anti-farming book. From silkworms grown on plantations in Japan to mink farms off Denmark's western coast and pearl beds in the Sea of Corts, the book focuses more on the ways people work with animals and what we should learn from those exchanges. Animal welfare, worker safety, environmental health, sustainable practices, product accountability, and respect for indigenous knowledge and practice consumer awareness of these things is driving change in the fashion industry, creating a slow fashion movement. At its heart, Putting on the Dog examines the historic ceremonial and practical use of animals as clothing, helping us bridge the growing rift between human consciousness and consumption with the interdependence and sustenance that the natural world offers us.