The economy of textiles provides insight into the fabric of social relations, local and global politics, and diverse ideologies. Textile production and exchange represent a key node for the intersections of multiple aspects of ancient and modern economies, including social-class relations, gender, tourism, exchange, commerce, and transpolity relationships. A political economy of textiles, discussed from a broad interdisciplinary perspective, offers ways to understand cloth and clothing as parts of mutually constitutive processes that shape and reflect economic practices, cultural ideologies, and sociopolitical rank.