Fabric of America: Our Fashions, Textiles, and Technologies

Drawing exclusively from The Henry Ford's collections, Fabric of America: Our Fashions, Textiles, and Technologies explores the deep connections between textiles and our shared history. Through five enduring American values — liberty, practicality, inventiveness, abundance and individualism — this exhibition reveals how fabric shapes who we are as a people and a nation, presented as part of The Henry Ford's America: 250 Years in the Making commemoration.

Presenting a rare opportunity to see over 500 artifacts from our permanent textile collection, Fabric of America is divided into five key themes:

• Liberty

  Justice · Freedom · Equality · Empowerment
  Artifact Highlights: Household items carried by the Adler family as they fled Nazi Germany illustrate the power of textiles to hold memory, hope and heritage. Intimate objects like tablecloths, doilies and decorative shelf liners introduce a story of refuge and reinvention — one that continues through Ruth Adler Schnee's entrepreneurial textile and design career.



• Practicality

  Informality · Utility · Functionality
  Artifact Highlights: Feed and food sacks repurposed into dresses, aprons and bedding, along with examples of durable workwear, explore the resourcefulness and creativity found in the story of practicality.



• Inventiveness

  Ambition · Creativity · Innovation
  Artifact Highlights: Garments by designers such as Bonnie Cashin, Halston and Ralph Lauren demonstrate the creativity that defines American fashion. Their work appears alongside innovations in textile production, highlighting how new ideas continually transform what we wear.



• Abundance

  Affordability · Materialism · Replication · Speed · Novelty
  Artifact Highlights: Power looms, fabric samples and factory-made garments show how mechanized weaving and clothing construction fueled a new era of mass production and affordability — profoundly changing the way we worked and lived. Contemporary fast-fashion garments extend the story to the present and prompt reflection on abundance and its environmental impact.



• Individualism

  Autonomy · Theatrics · Identity
  Artifact Highlights: Bold silhouettes like the zoot suit — with its oversized shoulders, wide lapels and tapered trousers — were embraced by Black and Mexican American communities as expressions of pride and presence, demonstrating how clothing communicates identity.

Together, these stories present a retrospective of the ways clothing and textiles have conveyed identity, ambition and possibility across American history. From practical workwear to haute couture, understated household items to exuberant fashion statements, displayed artifacts highlight both the overlooked and the celebrated. Machinery, raw materials and the tools of textile production round out this narrative, revealing the full lifecycle of fabric and the many forces that shape it.

For 250 years, Americans have expressed shifting identities through textiles, clothing and fashion, even as core values have endured. Fabric of America shows how these artifacts capture the country's history and the diverse experiences of its people, offering a compelling look at how fabric continues to reflect and define us.