“THINGS FALL APART,” Encaustic on Panel, 24 x 24. From “The Clothes We Wear,” upcoming December 2021 solo exhibition at Kreuser Gallery. A percentage of all sales from this exhibition will be donated to Who Gives a SCRAP/Art SWAP 501c3 to support children's local programming.
Like many whose childhood occurred during the 1950's and 1960's, I grew up with hand-me-downs from an older cousin or sibling. It was a make-do concept championed by parents whose own childhood was shaped by the 1930's depression era. We shopped for new apparel once a year, school clothing and shoes, at JC Penney's, Wards, or Sears.
Thus for me, all I dreamt of was buying new. By the time I was living on my own, a transformation in the clothing industry was emerging that suited my desire (and thin budget) for all things new. With the 1992 signing of NAFTA and the outsourcing of American garment manufacturing, a new era in clothing manufacturing erupted. Fast Fashion arrived with the emergence of retailers such as Zara, H&M, Old Navy and American Eagle, companies born of cheap overseas labor.
Over the last forty years, marketing and cut-rate pricing has created our see now, buy now, discard now approach to contemporary fashion. For the past two years, I have been working on creating an exhibition that calls our attention to viable alternatives to a closet full of cheaply made, unsustainably sourced clothing.
One such approach is to extend the life of an article of clothing with mending. Although I learned how to sew in my teens, and my mother made many of our family's clothing with her Singer sewing machine, I don't remember much mending.
Mending was not part of my way of being; my generation viewed mending as a signifier of poverty in that one could not afford to buy new. Presently, however, the tide has turned and the term “visible mending” is trending as a badge of honor. So how is it that I've moved from feeling shame at the thought of wearing mended clothing, to this present sense of deep satisfaction at accomplishing a small, funky mending of my favorite Darn Tough Vermont merino wool socks?
Kate Sekules (clothes historian, writer, mender), in an 8/26/21 Selvedge Magazine Newsletter article “Why Do We Mend?” states it best: “mending is coming back as more and more people understand the mess we're in with our metastasized fashion industry. It's insane to keep consuming. Creative interventions in the trillions of existing garments can keep us going for decades….we forget how incredibly valuable fabric always was, until not much more than a century ago, how universal was the need to preserve the precious resource.”
She goes on to note that “taking control of one's own wardrobe and relationship to fashion via visible mending is a link to one's deeper self, the freedom, the permission to play. Mending is also an art form—a scrappy one. It's extemporizing with cloth and thread, a creative, personal process that's way more than repairing.”
Thusly, when I look down at my foot and see the healed tear in my sock, the visible mending signifies courage and strength, a beauty mark even. A smartness and skill to extend life. A rebel even, against our over consumptive culture. My part in keeping a piece of clothing out of the landfill.
I'd love to hear if you've taken up mending, your history towards the skill, and what you're doing to battle the environmental ills of Fast Fashion.