Textile Aesthetic Dialogues of Garment Mending

Creative engagements with mending may cultivate change in how garments are perceived when breakage, time, and life appear as signs of wearing. Garment mending as a care and maintenance practice does not solely have the potential of extending clothing lifespan. Mending can also be seen as a bottom-up approach to altering a clothing culture through creativity and making. However, material expressions of mending are still to be researched to understand the influence on garment lifetime. This research is based on textile aesthetics and mending to better understand the material perspectives of garment repair. It discusses how designers can utilize their skills in materials and aesthetics to encourage engagement with garment expressions as a part of mending by providing support in creating a language of doing and verbalizing.
Rooted in design practice, this research is carried out through prototyping and full-garment sample-making in three encounters with mending, namely Material experimentation, Textile aesthetic materials as design tool, and Co-explorations with participants. The three encounters underline the complexity of mending. Mending a garment is not solely fixing the damage; it also requires the mender to consider the existing design of the garment and how to engage with that in relation to the damage.
In this paper, I discuss how designers can support making alterations to garments through a repair practice. By drawing on the preliminary findings of this research, textile aesthetic dialogues are suggested as an approach to which the designer can communicate and inspire consumers to feel confident in experimenting with mending as a medium of self-expression.