Provenance, Down to the Thread: Your Next Gown Could Prove Where Its Polyester Was Spun

This desk has built a career on establishing who made a dress, in which year, and for which carpet. The thread itself, it turns out, is about to start keeping its own records. Under a program called YarnProof, Unifi and a set of yarn makers across the region are putting FibreTrace markers into their polyester, so a statement about where a fiber came from can be checked against the fiber itself. The occasion is the fine print of two trade pacts, USMCA and CAFTA-DR, under which a sourcing claim has to stand up to inspection. For the archivist, it is a satisfying turn: the scrutiny we have always applied to the label now reaches all the way to the spool.

With reporting from WWD.