The State of Mended Clothing

by Brigid Trott

Image by Emilie Thomsen

Why Mend?

In order to make sense of current mending practices we must first look at why mending was practiced in the past. Reasons to mend clothing—to devote time, resources and skill to darning and stitching—vary. However, largely people mend quite simply because they need to make clothing last longer. Mending has a historic association with times of austerity, as well as with lower classes who cannot frequently buy new clothes (Bide, 2017; König, 2013; König, 2024; McLaren & McLauchlan, 2015). As König (2024) notes, the lack of historical documentation of mending, the rarity of existing mended material culture from the past, and the little (though growing) scholarly research on the subject suggest that mending resides near the bottom of social and historiographical hierarchies.

In the nineteenth century, mending was a daily practice for working class and poor families in particular, and as the fashion industry grew into the twentieth century, repaired clothing increasingly indicated a low socioeconomic status (König, 2024, pp. 115-116). Into the twentieth century, middle-class and upper-class households could afford to pay servants, tailors and seamstresses for repair work, or they could buy new clothes to replace the damaged and ill-fitting, but lower-class households had to do the work themselves (König, 2013, pp. 576-577). Hand-sewn and mended clothing were also features of the austere years surrounding World War II. In light of wartime rationing, the British government’s 1943 "Make Do and Mend" campaign promoted clothing repair and provided the public with information on how to mend their household goods (Bide, 2017; König, 2013; König, 2024). Although "Make Do and Mend" called on all members of society to mend, “[g]overnment documents indicate that this type of home sewing required ample leisure time and means” (Bide, 2017, p. 463). In the tough times surrounding WWII, "proper" mending was only accessible to the non-working, comfortable classes, and lower, working class folks had to make do. Since the mid-twentieth century, the fashion industry has made cheap, mass-produced clothing, also known as fast-fashion, readily available to a wide range of socioeconomic classes. Mending out of necessity has not gone away in the current fast-fashion age (König, 2024, p. 123). However, cheap, hard-to-mend fabrics and easy access to low-cost clothing have caused mending practices to be mostly superseded by mass-consumption (Derwanz, 2020, p. 56; König, 2013, p. 574; König, 2024, p. 122; McLaren & McLauchlan, 2015, p. 222). The stigma of economic hardship has also stuck to mended clothes and contributed to their lasting negative image, making mending a less appealing choice (McLaren & Lauchlan, 2015, p. 222).

Who Mends?

In addition to its association with poverty, mending has a strong association with femininity. Mending clothing is a form of housework, and following long-standing gendered divisions that place men’s work outside the home and women’s work inside it, mending is part of the female domain; as it has been practiced from the 19th century to today, mending falls into the category of unpaid, undervalued, and unacknowledged women’s work (Derwanz, 2020; König, 2013; König, 2024; McLaren & McLauchlan, 2015). Consequently, in addition to knowing how to sew, knit, and darn, domestic women held a vast amount of knowledge regarding fabric, cut, and design (König, 2024, pp. 113-115). Mothers and grandmothers passed their skills and knowledge to their friends and daughters, and from the latter half of the nineteenth century, women-oriented magazines, pamphlets, and books spread domestic knowledge like mending as well (Derwanz, 2020; König, 2024). Significantly, women met and sewed in groups, and mending was a common social activity (König, 2013, p. 582). Mending was thus part of women’s work and women’s connection to each other.

Furthermore, mending was connected to femininity symbolically as well as practically. Deftness at sewing and clothing repair represented the nineteenth-century feminine ideal: namely, a woman who is virtuous, industrious and committed to domestic well-being (Derwanz, 2020, p. 55; König, 2024, p. 116). However, with mending, like with many feminine ideals, the line dividing morality from immorality is thin. In the 1800s, worn out clothing showed skin that would normally be covered, and this exposure along with the tears themselves indicated an intimacy with daily bodily movements that was sexually suggestive and needed to be mended and contained (König, 2024, p. 114). It is also crucial to note that many women resisted needlework tasks and “the domestic work of sewing was perceived to be a hindrance in the education of girls” (König, 2024, p. 117). Therefore, it was a welcome development when cheap clothing meant mending was no longer necessary and became a form of paid labour outside the home (König, 2013, p. 576).

Photo by K. Sark

Mending Today?

In the past, the goal of mending was to fix the article of clothing seamlessly; the mend should be as invisible as possible. The stigma that linked mending to poverty meant people did not want their patches, darned holes, and re-stitched seams on display for public scrutiny. The more invisible the mend, the more skill and knowledge was involved. Due to mending’s link to femininity, invisibly mended clothing therefore symbolized a valued display of womanhood. Today, visible mending has emerged as an alternative to invisible mending (König, 2024, p. 124). Due to fast-fashion, mending is a choice, not a necessity; it is a leisure activity or hobby, and since hobbies require time and money, mending is linked to poverty less than it once was (König, 2013, p. 577). The link between mending and femininity is also less significant. Although contemporary mending circles and repair groups feature a dominant female presence, this phenomenon is largely a result of the fashion object’s connection to femininity—the intertwined nature of the act of mending and femininity is still present, but it is not explicitly pronounced (König, 2013, pp. 577-578).

As a type of needlework, mending is closely related to embroidery. Therefore, Parker’s The Subversive Stitch (2012) is worth considering when contextualizing mending as a practice today. For one, embroidery, like mending, is traditionally a craft, and is linked to the working class (Parker, 2012, p. 5). Additionally, similar to mending, embroidery is categorized as women’s work that is historically practiced by women at home (Parker, 2012). And again, like clothing repair, embroidery is a skill that is passed down to female family members and performed in female social settings (Parker, 2012, pp. 8, 15). Embroidery is also symbolically feminine as it expresses feminine ideals of “service and selflessness,” and “self-containment and submission” (Parker, 2012, pp. 6, 11). Finally, just as mending connects women to the sensuality of bodily movements, the self-contained female embroiderer is linked to female seduction and thus connotes danger (Parker, 2012, p. 10). Parker’s book argues that female crafts such as embroidery have been undervalued in the artistic hierarchy in contrast to the vaulted male-dominated fine arts like painting and sculpture due to their connection to femininity (2012, p. 5). Although doing so recognizes the hierarchy established by separate male and female spheres, Parker uplifts embroidery to an art “because it is, undoubtedly, a cultural practice involving iconography, style and a social function” (2012, p. 6). Mending, as it is practiced today, involves similar artistic elements and can be considered a form of art.

So, how is visible mending art? It certainly has an iconography, a style and a social function. Visible mending allows the mender to present their distinct style through their designs. It makes a mass-produced article of clothing one-of-a-kind by adding a stitch of unique beauty to what was previously ubiquitous (De Perthius, 2016, p. 62; Derwanz, 2020, p. 67). Visible mending also consciously subverts the practice’s past and present associations. It is aware of mending’s link to low-class labour and celebrates the mended aesthetic by making it visible. Visible mending also nods to stereotypical gender divisions by simplifying the skill-level involved in the process (McLaren & McLauchlan, 2015). This openness not only welcomes all to partake in the practice, it also sends the message that women’s work does not need to be done in a subdued manner in the service of the family—it can be done loudly, badly, for themselves. Most of all, visible mending takes a stance against the hyper-consumption promoted by fast-fashion and capitalism. Mending an article of clothing ascribes value to it beyond what the cheap prices in the current fashion industry say clothing is worth (Derwanz, 2020, p. 67). The aesthetic of visible mending goes against fashion trends and the fast-paced fashion cycle that asks the consumer to buy new (König, 2024, p. 124). Along those lines, visible mending asks that one slow down and spend time with often overlooked commodities (König, 2013, p. 583). And, as a practice that extends the life of clothing, mending “creates a kind of visual language that spreads the word about the importance of reuse in the age of climate change” (König, 2024, p. 124). Thinking of mending as art with a message raises many questions. For instance, how effectively does visible mending disrupt the fashion industry? How do we interpret and respond to the fact that mending is still gendered female? The question I will briefly consider below is how to contextualise the experience of wearing mended clothing.

How to Understand Mended Clothes?

Contemporary, visibly mended clothes are a form of embodied art that are integrated into daily life. Visible mending is art that extends from embroidery, but the key difference between mending and embroidery is that mended clothes share a close relationship with the body. The embroidered work and the mended work can both be created by hand (unless, of course, they are created with a machine), but mended cloth is initially worn out, and then worn again. Mending clothing changes the object from a commodity to a non-commodity, and in so doing suffuses the life of the material with the lives of the wearer and the repairer. In his writings on commodities, Kopytoff (1986) defines a commodity as “a thing that has use value and that can be exchanged in a discrete transaction for a counterpart” (p. 68). Newly purchased, mass-produced clothes are perceived by the consumer to be commodities that are not made to be altered and that have an inherent obsolescence (Derwanz, 2020, p. 58; McLaren & McLauchlan, 2015, p. 223); clothes are commodities that are disposable once they no longer serve their use as fashionable items (De Perthius, 2016, p. 71). Kopytoff further proposes that “in the West [...] we usually take saleability to be the unmistakable indicator of commodity status, while non-saleability imparts to a thing a special aura of apartness from the mundane and the common” (1986, p. 69). Following this definition, mended clothes are unsaleable, non-commodities by virtue of their transformation from a mass-produced fashion item into a uniquely mended piece of clothing (De Perthius, 2016).

Photo by K. Sark

Mending an item also marks that item as valued and vital. As Stallybrass (1993) points out, capitalism is a materialistic system in which objects are “endlessly devalued and replaced;” since the Cartesian separation of the body and the mind, “the life of matter is relegated to the trash can of the ‘merely’” (p. 39). The life of humans is significant while the life of matter is insignificant because things are merely things that cannot think. Heidegger critiques the dichotomy between people and things, as this idea “impose[s] a conceptualisation of things that closed down multiple possibilities” (De Perthius, 2016, p. 64). Mending a garment renders it permanently incomplete and removes it from fashion. Mending also lends power to a material object as it is an active refusal of the inherent obsolescence of modern things (König, 2013, p. 578). Thus, mending breathes life into the lifeless and opens up the possibility that the commodity or thing has become—not a sentient being, but still a being with a force that has the power to disrupt.

Not only is a material object brought to life by being mended, it also inherits the touch of the person who mended it (König, 2013, p. 578). Stallybrass (1993) and De Perthius (2016) both discuss the imprint of departed loved ones on the clothing they leave behind. Stallybrass says the “magic of the cloth [...] is that it receives us: receives our smells, our sweat, our shape even. And when our parents, our friends, our lovers die, the clothes in their closets still hang there, holding their gestures [...] touching the living with the dead” (1993, p. 36). This phenomenon is observed by De Perthius after her husband died, when “memories of his body remained in the shape of his jumper [...] but most of all in the uneven patches of darning that could conjure up the touch of his hands as he had fingered the wool” (2016, p. 61). The passing of a loved one makes us confront the life contained within their things. This is uncomfortable and difficult not just because of grief, but because recognizing that an object holds touch and memory and love goes against the modern capitalist definition of material objects (De Perthius, 2016, p. 69; Stallybrass, 1998, p. 186).

If, in capitalist society, the death of a wearer of clothing can bring to light the clothing’s lively, intimate relationship with the departed wearer, so too the death of clothing—clothing that has died by getting a hole, a tear, a fray—can bring to light the intimate relationship between wearer, object, and repairer when it is mended and brought back to life. Wearing clothing is a bodily experience. Clothing gets worn out by interacting with the body that wears it and the environment in which it is worn. So, especially when done by hand, mending is an act that brings the mender in direct contact with marks made by the body on cloth. The mender then manipulates the fabric with their own body and leaves an imprint that is absorbed into the cloth as well. When worn anew, the article of clothing in its altered state shares its body with the body of the repairer and the body of the wearer. Stallybrass comments that clothes undergo a transformation when they are worn by a new wearer while simultaneously joining the old wearer to the new (1993, p. 43). Likewise, mended clothes undergo a transformation when repaired and when reworn by the same wearer, and this transformation joins the repairer and the wearer.

There are lots of unanswered questions that remain about the role mended clothing has in our lives. For instance, what happens to the relationship formed by mended clothing if the repairer is unknown to the wearer? What if the repairer is the wearer? The important thing is the importance of things. In a capitalist, hyper-consumptive, fast-fashion focused society, people take time to recognize, interact with and therefore value the things they carry (or carry them) through their lives by mending.

Bibliography

Bide, B. (2017). Signs of wear: Encountering memory in the worn materiality of a museum fashion collection. Fashion Theory, 21(4), 449-476. https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2017.1290204.

De Perthius, K. (2016). Darning Mark’s jumper: wearing love and sorrow. Cultural Studies Review, 22(1), 59-77. https://doi.org/10.5130/csr.v22i1.4909.

Derwanz, H. (2020). Mending: Female education in waste prevention over the centuries. In R. Ek & N. Johansson (Eds.), Perspectives on waste from the social sciences and humanities: Opening the bin (55-74). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

König, A. (2013). A stitch in time. Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 5, 569-585. http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se.

König, A. (2024). Mending and repairing. In V. Pouillard & V. Dubé-Senécal (Eds.), The Routledge history of fashion and dress, 1800 to the present (112-130). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429295607-8.

Kopytoff, I. (1986). The cultural biography of things: Commoditization as a process. In A. Appadurai (Ed.), The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective (64-91). Cambridge University Press.

McLaren, A. & McLauchlan, S. (2015). Crafting sustainable repairs: Practice-based approaches to extending the life of clothes. PLATE Conference, 221-228.

Parker, R. (2012). The subversive stitch: Embroidery and the making of the feminine. I.B. Taurus.

Stallybrass, P. (1998). Marx’s coat. In P. Spyer (Ed.), Border fetishisms: Material objects in unstable space (183-207). Routledge.

Stallybrass, P. (1993). Worn worlds: Clothes, mourning and the life of things. The Yale review, 81(2), 35-50.

Bio

Brigid Trott (she/her) is a writer and researcher living in Ottawa, Ontario on the traditional unceded territory of the Anishnaabeg People. Her work has centered around idealized depictions of fashion on feminine bodies in visual culture. Her research previously focused on historical representations of clothing. She is also interested in the modern depiction of the fashioned body and its role in the hyper-consumption of clothing. She graduated from McGill University with a BA in Art History and from Toronto Metropolitan University with an MA in Fashion.