With wooden spinning wheels and hand-drawn looms, Bangladesh is painstakingly resurrecting a fabric once worn by Marie Antoinette and Jane Austen but long thought forever lost to history.

Dhaka muslin was stitched from threads so fine that popular folklore in European parlours held that a change in the light or a sudden rain shower would render its wearer apparently naked.

The textile once brought magnificent riches to the lands where it was spun.

But to revive it, botanists had to hunt halfway across the world and back for a plant believed gone from the face of the earth.

"Nobody knew how it was made," said Ayub Ali, a senior government official helping shepherd the revival project.

"We lost the famous cotton plant, which provided the special fine yarn for Dhaka muslin," he told AFP.

The muslin trade at one time helped turn the Ganges delta and what is now Bangladesh into one of the most prosperous parts of the world, historians say.&nbsp;

Flowing dress garments weaved from the cloth were worn by generations of the Mughal dynasty then ruling India before the fabric enchanted European aristocrats and other notables at the end of the 18th century.

A muslin shawl belonging to Austen -- supposedly hand-embroidered by the "Pride and Prejudice" author herself -- is on display at her former home in Hampshire, while a 1783 portrait of Marie Antoinette depicts the French queen in a muslin dress.

But the industry collapsed in the years after the 18th century conquest of the Bengal delta by the East India Company, paving the way for British colonial rule.

The mills and factories that sprung up in England after the industrial revolution produced much cheaper textiles, while European tariffs killed the foreign market for the delicate fabric.

- 'Rare and possibly extinct' -

The quest to bring back Bangladeshi muslin began with a painstaking five-year search for the specific flower used to weave the fabric, which only grows near the capital Dhaka.&nbsp;

"Muslin can't be woven without Phuti Carpus cotton. So to revive Dhaka Muslin, we needed to find this rare and possibly extinct cotton plant," said Monzur Hossain, the botanist who led the effort.&nbsp;

His team consulted a seminal book on plants by the 18th century Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus along with a later historical tome on Dhaka muslin to narrow down a candidate among 39 different wild species collected from around Bangladesh.&nbsp;

With local museums lacking any specimen of Dhaka muslin clothing, Hossain and his colleagues went to India, Egypt and Britain for samples.

At the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, curators showed them hundreds of pieces imported from Mughal-era Dhaka by East India Company merchants.

Genetic samples revealed that the missing plant was already in their hands, found by the botanists in the riverside town of Kapasia north of the capital.

"It was a 100 percent match, and some history books say Kapasia was one of the places where Phuti Carpus was grown," Hossain told AFP.

The plant is now being grown in experimental farms in an effort to raise yields and scale up production.&nbsp;

- 'Like doing prayers' -

But the revival project immediately ran into another roadblock -- finding weavers nimble enough to weave the plant's ultra-fine threads.

In the two centuries since the muslin trade collapsed, Bangladesh has again become a world textile hub, albeit with an industry no longer catering to royalty or other international elites.&nbsp;

Instead Dhaka is now home to countless bustling factories of the global fast fashion trade, supplying huge brands such as H&amp;M and Walmart, with its $35 billion in yearly apparel exports second only to China.

The country has no shortage of garment workers, but the muslin project needed to source artisans from the small cottage industry of spinners and weavers working with fragile threads.&nbsp;

They found candidates from villages around Dhaka where small workshops make intricate saris from jamdari, a fine cotton produced in a similar way to muslin.

"I don't how I did it. But it needs supreme concentration," said Mohsina Akhter, one of the spinners brought into the project.&nbsp;

"To do it you have to be in perfect mind. If you are angry or worried, you can't hand spin such a fine yarn."

It took months for the team to master the craft, working with threads four or more times finer than jamdari, with two people taking eight hours of non-stop labour to weave an inch or less of cloth.

"It is like doing prayers. You need to have full concentration. Any lapse will tear up the yarn and set your work backwards," said Abu Taher, a weaver.

"The more I work, the more I wonder how our ancestors wove such a fine clothing. It is almost impossible," he told AFP.

The intense labour needed means that any garments stitched from Dhaka muslin will always remain a boutique product, but the government has found some tentative interest from established industry players.&nbsp;

"We want to make it a top global fashion item. It has a great history," said Parvez Ibrahim, whose family owns a factory supplying global fashion retailers.

"But to bring down cost, we have to speed up the production process. Otherwise, reviving Dhaka muslin won't mean anything," he told AFP.

With wooden spinning wheels and hand-drawn looms, Bangladesh is painstakingly resurrecting a fabric once worn by Marie Antoinette and Jane Austen but long thought forever lost to history.

With wooden spinning wheels and hand-drawn looms, Bangladesh is painstakingly resurrecting a fabric once worn by Marie Antoinette and Jane Austen but long thought forever lost to history. Dhaka muslin was stitched from threads so fine that popular folklore in European parlours held that a change in the light or a sudden rain shower would render its wearer apparently naked. The textile once brought magnificent riches to the lands where it was spun. But to revive it, botanists had to hunt halfway across the world and back for a plant believed gone from the face of the earth. "Nobody knew how it was made," said Ayub Ali, a senior government official helping shepherd the revival project. "We lost the famous cotton plant, which provided the special fine yarn for Dhaka muslin," he told AFP. The muslin trade at one time helped turn the Ganges delta and what is now Bangladesh into one of the most prosperous parts of the world, historians say. Flowing dress garments weaved from the cloth were worn by generations of the Mughal dynasty then ruling India before the fabric enchanted European aristocrats and other notables at the end of the 18th century. A muslin shawl belonging to Austen -- supposedly hand-embroidered by the "Pride and Prejudice" author herself -- is on display at her former home in Hampshire, while a 1783 portrait of Marie Antoinette depicts the French queen in a muslin dress. But the industry collapsed in the years after the 18th century conquest of the Bengal delta by the East India Company, paving the way for British colonial rule. The mills and factories that sprung up in England after the industrial revolution produced much cheaper textiles, while European tariffs killed the foreign market for the delicate fabric. - 'Rare and possibly extinct' - The quest to bring back Bangladeshi muslin began with a painstaking five-year search for the specific flower used to weave the fabric, which only grows near the capital Dhaka. "Muslin can't be woven without Phuti Carpus cotton. So to revive Dhaka Muslin, we needed to find this rare and possibly extinct cotton plant," said Monzur Hossain, the botanist who led the effort. His team consulted a seminal book on plants by the 18th century Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus along with a later historical tome on Dhaka muslin to narrow down a candidate among 39 different wild species collected from around Bangladesh. With local museums lacking any specimen of Dhaka muslin clothing, Hossain and his colleagues went to India, Egypt and Britain for samples. At the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, curators showed them hundreds of pieces imported from Mughal-era Dhaka by East India Company merchants. Genetic samples revealed that the missing plant was already in their hands, found by the botanists in the riverside town of Kapasia north of the capital. "It was a 100 percent match, and some history books say Kapasia was one of the places where Phuti Carpus was grown," Hossain told AFP. The plant is now being grown in experimental farms in an effort to raise yields and scale up production. - 'Like doing prayers' - But the revival project immediately ran into another roadblock -- finding weavers nimble enough to weave the plant's ultra-fine threads. In the two centuries since the muslin trade collapsed, Bangladesh has again become a world textile hub, albeit with an industry no longer catering to royalty or other international elites. Instead Dhaka is now home to countless bustling factories of the global fast fashion trade, supplying huge brands such as H&M and Walmart, with its $35 billion in yearly apparel exports second only to China. The country has no shortage of garment workers, but the muslin project needed to source artisans from the small cottage industry of spinners and weavers working with fragile threads. They found candidates from villages around Dhaka where small workshops make intricate saris from jamdari, a fine cotton produced in a similar way to muslin. "I don't how I did it. But it needs supreme concentration," said Mohsina Akhter, one of the spinners brought into the project. "To do it you have to be in perfect mind. If you are angry or worried, you can't hand spin such a fine yarn." It took months for the team to master the craft, working with threads four or more times finer than jamdari, with two people taking eight hours of non-stop labour to weave an inch or less of cloth. "It is like doing prayers. You need to have full concentration. Any lapse will tear up the yarn and set your work backwards," said Abu Taher, a weaver. "The more I work, the more I wonder how our ancestors wove such a fine clothing. It is almost impossible," he told AFP. The intense labour needed means that any garments stitched from Dhaka muslin will always remain a boutique product, but the government has found some tentative interest from established industry players. "We want to make it a top global fashion item. It has a great history," said Parvez Ibrahim, whose family owns a factory supplying global fashion retailers. "But to bring down cost, we have to speed up the production process. Otherwise, reviving Dhaka muslin won't mean anything," he told AFP.

'Woven air': Bangladesh revives elite forgotten fabric

Think of Bangladesh and chances are that you will think of a garment manufacturing hub, with a goal to dominate the world in the textiles sector.

That’s precisely what the South Asian nation has done since the turn of this century.

From being a little-known entity in the business, it has spun an amazing yarn of success to become the world's second-largest exporter of readymade garments, just behind mighty China.

The textile sector contributes around 20 per cent of the country’s GDP now. The RMG (readymade garments) sector currently accounts for 80 per cent of Bangladesh’s net exports.

Just before the coronavirus pandemic hit, industry circles were abuzz with achieving the target of $50 billion in RMG exports by 2021 and doubling it to $100 bn by 2025.

A casual scan of the textile sector would suggest that cheap labour was an advantage, with minimum wages still lower than China, India, Vietnam and others. But that would be an oversimplistic explanation of a success story. Bangladesh has been using different factors to its advantage to become a garmenting powerhouse.

While supportive government policies continue to play a part in encouraging foreign direct investment in the textile sector, Bangladesh has also used preferential access to the European Union market to its advantage.

With its Least Developed Country status, Bangladesh enjoyed duty-free access to markets in over 50 countries.

In particular, the EU’s duty-free, quota-free exports policy under its ‘Everything But Arms’ mandate helped Bangladesh increase its apparel exports from $7 bn in 2007 to over $21 bn in 2017.

But what makes Bangladesh an enduring success story is the willingness of the industry to adapt to the changing environment.

While 37 universities in the country now produce textile graduates every year, FDI in setting up spinning and weaving factories is being encouraged to meet the raw material demand internally, cutting dependency on countries like China and India.

Learning from Vietnam, Bangladesh remains acutely aware that its labour cost advantage will fritter away in the years to come.

The CEO of Bangladesh Apparel Exchange, Mostafiz Uddin, recently pointed out that the country will lose its labour advantage to automation sooner than later.

It must, therefore, be ready with adequate investment in research and development and well-educated professionals to provide tech solutions for the industry to adapt and grow, he said.

It is with this keen eye on the future that in 2019, Bangladesh decided to create the RMG Sustainability Council to ensure workplace safety in the garment sector.

If done and delivered right, the safety and sustainability monitoring system could be the country’s calling card in a highly competitive market in the years to come.

Think of Bangladesh and chances are that you will think of a garment manufacturing hub, with a goal to dominate the world in the textiles sector. That’s precisely what the South Asian nation has done since the turn of this century.

Think of Bangladesh and chances are that you will think of a garment manufacturing hub, with a goal to dominate the world in the textiles sector. That’s precisely what the South Asian nation has done since the turn of this century. From being a little-known entity in the business, it has spun an amazing yarn of success to become the world's second-largest exporter of readymade garments, just behind mighty China. The textile sector contributes around 20 per cent of the country’s GDP now. The RMG (readymade garments) sector currently accounts for 80 per cent of Bangladesh’s net exports. Just before the coronavirus pandemic hit, industry circles were abuzz with achieving the target of $50 billion in RMG exports by 2021 and doubling it to $100 bn by 2025. A casual scan of the textile sector would suggest that cheap labour was an advantage, with minimum wages still lower than China, India, Vietnam and others. But that would be an oversimplistic explanation of a success story. Bangladesh has been using different factors to its advantage to become a garmenting powerhouse. While supportive government policies continue to play a part in encouraging foreign direct investment in the textile sector, Bangladesh has also used preferential access to the European Union market to its advantage. With its Least Developed Country status, Bangladesh enjoyed duty-free access to markets in over 50 countries. In particular, the EU’s duty-free, quota-free exports policy under its ‘Everything But Arms’ mandate helped Bangladesh increase its apparel exports from $7 bn in 2007 to over $21 bn in 2017. But what makes Bangladesh an enduring success story is the willingness of the industry to adapt to the changing environment. While 37 universities in the country now produce textile graduates every year, FDI in setting up spinning and weaving factories is being encouraged to meet the raw material demand internally, cutting dependency on countries like China and India. Learning from Vietnam, Bangladesh remains acutely aware that its labour cost advantage will fritter away in the years to come. The CEO of Bangladesh Apparel Exchange, Mostafiz Uddin, recently pointed out that the country will lose its labour advantage to automation sooner than later. It must, therefore, be ready with adequate investment in research and development and well-educated professionals to provide tech solutions for the industry to adapt and grow, he said. It is with this keen eye on the future that in 2019, Bangladesh decided to create the RMG Sustainability Council to ensure workplace safety in the garment sector. If done and delivered right, the safety and sustainability monitoring system could be the country’s calling card in a highly competitive market in the years to come.

Readymade in Bangladesh: A future-proof success story in textiles

Garment manufacturers in Bangladesh on Sunday demanded higher export subsidies from the government, saying proposals in the latest national budget, unveiled last week, were not enough to compensate for higher production costs and low prices.

Bangladesh textile industry earns about $30 billion annually by exporting readymade garments, which represents about 16% of the economy and employs over 4 million workers.

But last year, the prices of garments fell 7.4% in the United States market and 3.64% in the European market compared to 2012, according to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA).

Manufacturers' costs have been rising, mainly driven by labour costs. Last year, for example, there was a big increase in the minimum wage for Bangladesh garment makers.

In April, the garment makers asked the government to extend a 5% export subsidy for the industry that was due to end on June 30.

The budget proposed an enhanced one-time cash incentive for garment exporters of 5% of the value of goods exported to a new market from 4% currently. It also proposed an additional cash subsidy of 1% of the total value of garments exported.

The garment industry is pressing the government to increase the additional incentive to 3% from the proposed 1% before the budget goes to parliament for approval.

Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal's budget for the fiscal year of 2019-20 that starts in July has the total expenditure of 5.23 trillion takas ($61.90 billion) and an economic growth target of 8.2% for the year. It has yet to be ratified by the parliament.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association is backing the demand for higher subsidies because of the slump in international prices and increased costs.

Rubana Huq, BGMEA president, said a number of factories had had to sell machinery to pay monthly wages and bonuses linked to the end of Ramadan. "We urge the government to look after the sector,” Huq said.

Garment manufacturers in Bangladesh on Sunday demanded higher export subsidies from the government, saying proposals in the latest national budget, unveiled last week, were not enough to compensate for higher production costs and low prices.

Garment manufacturers in Bangladesh on Sunday demanded higher export subsidies from the government, saying proposals in the latest national budget, unveiled last week, were not enough to compensate for higher production costs and low prices. Bangladesh textile industry earns about $30 billion annually by exporting readymade garments, which represents about 16% of the economy and employs over 4 million workers. But last year, the prices of garments fell 7.4% in the United States market and 3.64% in the European market compared to 2012, according to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA). Manufacturers' costs have been rising, mainly driven by labour costs. Last year, for example, there was a big increase in the minimum wage for Bangladesh garment makers. In April, the garment makers asked the government to extend a 5% export subsidy for the industry that was due to end on June 30. The budget proposed an enhanced one-time cash incentive for garment exporters of 5% of the value of goods exported to a new market from 4% currently. It also proposed an additional cash subsidy of 1% of the total value of garments exported. The garment industry is pressing the government to increase the additional incentive to 3% from the proposed 1% before the budget goes to parliament for approval. Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal's budget for the fiscal year of 2019-20 that starts in July has the total expenditure of 5.23 trillion takas ($61.90 billion) and an economic growth target of 8.2% for the year. It has yet to be ratified by the parliament. The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association is backing the demand for higher subsidies because of the slump in international prices and increased costs. Rubana Huq, BGMEA president, said a number of factories had had to sell machinery to pay monthly wages and bonuses linked to the end of Ramadan. "We urge the government to look after the sector,” Huq said.

Bangladesh garment manufacturers seek higher export subsidies