Moreover, the global marketplace has displaced once steady jobs like seamstresses and textile workers.

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Tom Quantrill(ph) says there are tens of thousands of people just like Jennings, former textile workers now making more in high-tech factories.

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There's something like 600, 000 American textile workers looking for jobs.

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Meanwhile, occupations like hand sewing, fabric mending and textile knitting have also seen sharp declines in recent years.

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That is probably of little comfort to South Africa's ailing textile industry, or Mkalipi, and other workers like her.

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The conglomerate originated in textile mills that once dotted the shoreline in places like Providence, Fall River and New Bedford, and managed to stay healthy by diversifying into aerospace operations such as Cessna business jets.

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And not just his home: Puig i Cadafalch's Casaramona textile plant - now the CaixaForum museum of contemporary art - looks more like some extravagant fortified palace.

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In an effort to find affordable space, cash-poor creative types flocked to former industrial centres like Kwun Tong, Wong Chuk Hang and Fo Tan, turning former meatpacking warehouses and textile storage facilities into low-cost studios, showrooms and boutiques.

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Snipers got custom-made suits, such as the sinister, mummer-like British coats on display here, but mass-produced infantry camouflage had to wait until advances in textile printing.

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