“Like Stitches to a Wound”: Fashioning Taste in and Through Garment Mending Practices

Marium Durrani

doi:10.1177/08912416211012031

Abstract

This article immerses the reader into the world of garment mending in communal repair events in four cities— Helsinki, Auckland, Wellington, and Edinburgh—to explore mending as a locus of taste. It engages in the discussion on taste as a reflexive activity and a sensed effect that gradually reveals itself to the practitioners engaged in the practice of mending. Here the focus is on the role of the body and the interplay between the sensing body and materials, to show how everyday menders construct a taste for and toward their practice over time. As menders actively engage with and appropriate the given design of their garments, they defy mainstream wasteful fast-fashion practices and mobilize variations in dress practices while connecting with the matter that makes up their clothing . By engaging with the notion of taste in this way, the overall aim of this article is to clarify how everyday menders become able to form an alliance with their practice, ultimately converting mending into an object of passion.

Highlights

Holding onto the sheer fabric of a silvery-blue moonlight dress, Gale and Clarence were deep in conversation amidst the chattering of menders and the whirring of sewing machines
By engaging with the notion of taste, this article aims to explore how everyday menders become able to form an alliance with their practice, converting mending into an object of passion
Though mending is practiced in domestic settings, my immersion in communal mending spaces proved crucial for understanding the performative, material, and corporeal dimensions of taste

Summary

Introduction

Holding onto the sheer fabric of a silvery-blue moonlight dress, Gale and Clarence were deep in conversation amidst the chattering of menders and the whirring of sewing machines Like me, they too were examining the fate of a torn dress at the Remakery’s Thursday evening “Repair Surgery.” Clarence, a neophyte mender and shop assistant at a local store in Edinburgh, had often passed by the Remakery and curiously glanced inside its windows to observe the menders but had never stepped in before. This is where we can encourage them Once she had completed her practice exercises on the scrap fabric, Clarence placed the moonlight garment into the sewing machine and using straight stitches, started to repair her dress. Under the watchful guidance of Gale, Clarence began her induction into the world of mending and the community of menders!

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