In World 274, synthetic dye shortages started during WW1 have continued to the present day. Wearing naturally dyed clothes has become the norm, with the colours created by dyes that can be locally grown taking on cultural significance. Home gardens, allotments and community gardens are hubs of growth and creativity. Mending has become a standard part of life, with people expressing their creativity with brightly coloured darning and embroidery as small batches of thread are easier to transport, and are therefore more widely available in different colours, dyes by plants not native to the region.
With an emphasis on colour and embroidery, other areas of fashion have become less central, releasing clothes from their historical gender, social and class identifiers. Garments as just garments. All genders and classes have the freedom to play with the shape and colour of their clothes, with the societal spaces created to mend, make grown and design clothes breaking down historic barriers.
This World was contributed by Sonja Dengler (located in the UK), building on fictions contributed by Beth Pagett and Xi Fang, using a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence which allows others to share and adapt the work in any medium and for any purpose, providing that they credit the author and share their material using the same Creative Commons licence.
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