Surveying the Present and an Imagined Future

Abstract

Toward the effort of planning for the future, this article begins by summarizing current national and global contexts in which the textiles/apparel/retail complex and related education professions exist. These current contexts affect us as consumers, citizens, and professionals and will frame our individual and collective futures. The author uses these conditions as the foundation from which a work of fiction, told from the perspective of an elderly retired textiles and apparel professor in the year 2050, unfolds. The author emphasizes that the endeavors of neither education nor industry in the textiles and apparel fields exist outside global political, economic, and environmental circumstances and that these are key considerations in planning for the future.