Regina Lee Blaszczyk

Project Leader for The Enterprise of Culture and Rethinking Textiles
School of History, University of Leeds

Professor Regina Lee Blaszczyk is Project Leader for Enterprise of Culture, Principal Investigator for Rethinking Textiles and Leadership Chair in the History of Business and Society at the University of Leeds.  Her career has included positions as a cultural history curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, and the principal at Innovative Histories, a Philadelphia-based consultancy dedicated to documenting America’s innovation heritage.  She is the author or editor of nine books, including The Color Revolution (London: MIT Press, 2012), which was named a Best Business Book of 2012 by the Wall Street Journal and received the Sally Hacker Prize from the Society of the History of Technology in 2013.  The Color Revolution is the first full-length study on the history of color forecasting, and has inspired the EOC team to delve deeper into the history of trend forecasting.

Abstract

Leeds, Tweeds and the Global Fashion System: The Case of Abraham Moon and Sons, Guiseley

Yorkshire was once home to thousands of woolen and worsted mills, but today, there are very few survivors. What does it take to battle the odds in an ageing industry and to come out on top? This talk examines the history of design and innovation at Abraham Moon and Sons of Guiseley, which is the last vertically integrated woolen mill in England.  It is an exciting story of two families—the Moons and the Walshes—who started as clothiers selling their wares in the Leeds Coloured Cloth Hall and then created one of Yorkshire’s longest living woolen mills that today serves global brands such as Ralph Lauren Purple Label and Burberry.