'A nice children\'s\' educational film explaining the history of fashion, clothing, fabrics, and showing a mass production jeans factory. Emphasis on American history. A bell rings and a class of brightly clothed children spill out of the door. They go to the cloak room area and put on jackets and cardigans. One boys wears a yellow kagool or rain mac. Three children walk down a path outside. They come to a girl wearing an orange cape marked \"safety automobile club\" (like a junior lollipop lady). Cut to a traffic policeman nearby. Narrator tells us that some clothes designate helpers in the community. Helper in orange guides the children across the road. Joggers cross the road in the opposite direction - they wear clothes for activity. Workmen wear heavy cotton shirts and hard hats - they are dressed for safety. Firefighter wears a thick yellow jacket and a helmet. Doctors and nurses carry out an operation wearing green smocks and disposable masks and hairnets. Clothing for sports - boy sprints wearing vest and shorts, boy plays baseball in a club uniform, children play ice hockey in thick jackets and gloves. Clothes for special occasions - couple leave church after wedding, children at a tea party wear novelty hats, circus lion tamer wears a khaki safari suit, clown (scary), majorette parade with marching band. Man in mock up early American settlement wears deerskin jacket and jeans. Three children approach him and examine his jacket. Pioneer clothing was made from fibres which were readily available. Series of cartoons to illustrate the history of clothing and the development of different fibres. Starts with cavemen wearing leaves and animal furs decorated with bones. Early loom and sewing cloth. Egyptian loom and weaving. Indians (not native Americans) grow cotton. Chinese people breed silkworms. Europeans wearing leather, fur and wool. Europeans trade with Asians for new fabrics. \"Fashion\" designer in the middle ages. Early tailors and shoemakers. Blacksmith makes armour. Dyeing fabrics for expensive garments. Cut to a woman in the mock up settlement. She is dyeing wool and cotton in large pots over an open fire. Old woman sits at spinning wheel wearing pioneer style clothes. The three children sit and watch her tease out the flax. Same woman sits at an old loom with a hand- operated shuttle. Cut to archive shots of industrial spinning machines - many bobbins and spools of yarn. Archive of early Singer, electric sewing machine at work. Archive of automatic looms. Cloth making and a rag trade \"sweat shop\" type factory with hundreds of women at sewing machines. City street in the 1900s. Well dressed people mill about (women in bustles, men in great coats and top hats). Cut to busy 1980s street - lots of people wearing colourful shorts and t-shirts. Next section examines new man-made fibres and explores their origins and manufacture. Tree being felled by large machine. Wood pulped and put on conveyor belt. Coal comes out of mine on a conveyor belt. Men on oil rig. Shots of these raw materials being processed into \"staple fibres\". Fibres are then formed into loose strands. Industrial spinning machines make thread and yarn. High speed automated looms. Dyeing machine. Fabric printing machine (putting an awful flower pattern on some fabric). Rolls of cloth in a warehouse. Section showing the mass production of denim jeans. Layers of denim stacked on huge work benches. The patterns are cut out by jig saw type machines. Production line sewing (similar to the archive of the sweat shop). Close up of the woman making pockets and sewing in the \"Levi\'s\" tag. Man in vest presses the finished jeans. Close up on metal studs being attached to pockets. Close up on leather \"Levi\'s\" logo and size panel being sewn on the waistband. Finished jeans labelled , boxed and packaged for transit. Lorry on highway. Jeans arrive at a shop and are unloaded and checked. Jeans on display in shop. Woman with two children look at jeans and try them up in the mirror. 1980s street scene. Three children from earlier look at photos of pioneer families and are glad that fashions have changed. They dress in old clothing for a photo and giggle.'
Tags: footage , archive , film , History , eighties , material , historical , nineteen
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