Word: silk
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...collection began with a small prayer rug purchased from a souk in the old city of Damascus, to celebrate the safe completion of a stint working in Iraq. The Syrian capital has always been a particularly good place to shop for rugs, ever since Silk Road travelers from the great weaving cultures of Central Asia passed through this final arc of the fertile crescent on their way to the Holy lands. Those days are long gone, but Iranian pilgrims visiting Shi'ite Muslim shrines in Syria still sometimes bring in rugs as a way to circumvent Tehran's restrictions...
...Silk road gem and jade shop," the sign proudly states. Centrally located just down the street from the main mosque in Khotan, a dusty oasis town located in the vast Taklamakan Desert in China's far southwest, the shop is a focal point for the Muslim Uighurs who make up the majority of the local population. But though it is mid-morning, its gates are secured with heavy steel padlocks. Warning notices from the Public Security Bureau are pasted across the doors announcing that the business has been closed indefinitely. Until last month, this was one of the biggest private...
...Fear on the Silk Road Whatever the truth about the alleged planned attacks, resentment is growing in Uighur-dominated areas like Khotan. After March 14 protests in Lhasa, Tibet's capital, turned bloody, the police arrested large numbers of Uighur men, apparently hoping to prevent an escalation of unrest, according to Khotan residents and activists outside China. But the detentions had the opposite effect and on March 23, an estimated 500-700 women in black dresses, headscarves and veils demonstrated during the weekly bazaar, a market that authorities say draws some 100,000 attendees. "They pulled placards calling for independence...
Domingo Ramirez is a cutter on the tie-factory floor. He unrolls silk fabric from a long bolt and smooths it out on the cutting table. Then he lays down a cardboard pattern, draws a chalk outline and cuts the material with a circular knife. Like cutters around the world, Ramirez does this a hundred times a day. But unlike almost all of them, he does it in the U.S.--in New York City, specifically, just a 15-minute car ride from the Madison Avenue headquarters of his employer, Brooks Brothers...
...legions of apparel manufacturers who have gone overseas, the economics of making a Brooks Brothers tie in the U.S. are far different from those of making, say, plain cotton underwear. About 70% of the cost of making a Brooks tie comes from materials (the company imports almost all its silk fabric from England and Italy), which leaves a fairly small fraction of the cost coming from labor. Compare that with making a Brooks shirt, for which the proportion is flipped--just 30% of the cost of production is from the material--and it's easy to see why chasing...