panel 5
Care-full Critique of Current Clothing Repair Landscapes
Chairs: Liudmila Aliabieva, Olga Gurova & Iryna Kucher
When the fabric of life is bursting at the seams in different parts of the world, repair seems to be an essential need. Repair (or mending) is a fundamentally important concept for fashion studies. It is an indicator of a major paradigmatic shift. For a long time, fashion has been associated with novelty, newness, dynamism, and fast-paced change (Niinimäki et al., 2020; Allwood et al., 2006), which led to many problems, such as the vastly damaging effects of fashion on the environment and human beings' lives (Niessen, 2020). To counteract the impact of the fashion sector, mature capitalist societies in recent decades started to promote slow fashion practices, which gradually became widespread and no longer associated with material deprivation and a thrifty attitude to living. Within such a framework, statements such as “mending has died out” (Clark, 2008) have lost their actuality and were surpassed by the “mending revolution” (Klepp, 2022; Wackman and Knight, 2020), which rapidly gained popularity in different parts of the world. Initially, this mending return was accompanied by new meaning and associations with sustainability. However, quite soon, it has been transformed into a controversial fashion trend, which behind the façade of the ethics of care, turned mending into new consumption strategies. For instance, the production of mending enablers has increased, leading consumers to purchase new mending courses (to learn how to mend), new mending equipment (to facilitate such learning), and even brand-new clothing with fashion tears or stains (to have something to mend) (Kucher, 2024). To expand the discussion on clothing mending, which we recently initiated in Fashion Theory, we would like to invite some of the authors and editors of the special issue on clothing mending and continue a care-full critique of the abovementioned controversies and current clothing repair landscapes.
References
Allwood, J. M., Laursen, S. E., Malvido de Rodriguez, C. & Bocken, N. M. P. (2006). Well dressed? The present and future sustainability of clothing and textiles in the United Kingdom. University of Cambridge.
Clark, H. (2008). SLOW + FASHION – an Oxymoron – or a Promise for the Future...? Fashion Theory, 12(4), 427-446.
Klepp, I. G. (2022). Remake and repair – scissors and power. Russian Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture, 64, 9-24.
Niessen S. (2020). Fashion, its sacrifice zone, and sustainability. Fashion Theory, 24(6), 859-877.
Niinimäki, K., Peters, G., Dahlbo, H., Perry, P., Rissanen, T. & Gwilt, A. (2020). The environmental price of fast fashion. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 1, 189-200.
Wackman, J. & Knight, E. (2020). Repair revolution: How fixers are transforming our throwaway culture. New World Library.
We Can Mend It: Repair Practices in Times of Crisis (Case of Mendit Research Lab)
Liudmila Aliabieva
Mendit Research Lab, founded in Moscow in August 2021, is an independent practice-led female research collective that brings together ten participants who are close in research and creative spirit, united by their interest in clothing cultures, sustainable practices, textile activism, and co-creative strategies. The Lab operates in a variety of formats ranging from traditional academic forms such as seminars and discussion groups to practice-based workshops working both within and outside academia. We look at repair as an act of care and attachment, as form of resistance and problem-solving, as a therapeutical and creative gesture, and as form of sharing and coping with crisis.
Since its foundation our Lab has held dozens of workshops whose aim was to introduce people to mending, its various forms and contexts (visible/invisible, patching, stitching, embroidering, darning, remaking and repurposing etc.) as well as work with communities building a safe co-creative space. Focusing on Mendit Research Lab activities and initiatives, I will explore the potential of mending as art and design strategy, sustainable practice, community building tool and form of activism, silent protest, and resistance.
This presentation will be held in a practice-based format so everyone is welcome to bring in an item of clothing they would like to repair.
Even though we can’t save the world, we can try to mend it!
Dr. Liudmila Aliabieva is Editor-in-Chief of Russian Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture (2006-present), editor of the book series Fashion Theory Journal Library, Head of the PhD Program in Art & Design at the Higher School of Economics Research Institute (Moscow), and founder of Mendit Research Lab
New Pedagogies for a Sustainable Clothing Consumption
Olga Gurova
This presentation is based on the ongoing project VISU: The Village for Sustainable Clothing Ecosystem, which aims to bridge the gap between young people, educators, and companies. The presentation addresses how teachers guide young consumers toward sustainable clothing consumption, examining the pedagogical strategies, content ideas, and collaboration methods they employ. I draw on the concept of a “circular economy ecosystem,” considering teachers as key actors in this ecosystem who contribute to the dissemination and co-creation of knowledge on sustainable clothing consumption with their students. Sustainable clothing consumption here refers to practices that extend the lifecycle of clothing, including repair, reuse, and recycling. We interviewed twenty teachers, primarily from compulsory schools, high schools, and vocational schools in Finland, to understand their pedagogical approaches to promoting sustainable clothing consumption. Most of these teachers specialize in home economics, crafts, social studies, biology, and geography in compulsory and high schools, while in vocational schools, we primarily spoke to teachers in fashion and textiles. Our findings indicate that teachers possess a high level of agency; they practice what they preach, exhibiting passion and enthusiasm. Their approach to education aligns with that of activists, as they dedicate time and effort to developing and updating curricula to embed values related to sustainability. We found that while abstract thinking about environmental issues is increasing, manual skills, such as repair, are vanishing from the curriculum. In the presentation, I will share detailed empirical findings on pedagogical, content, and collaboration ideas to understand how new transformative pedagogies function in the everyday practice of teachers. I’ll also address how they deal with the moral issue of eco-anxiety among students, which arises from the increased attention to environmental concerns.
Olga Gurova, PhD in Cultural Studies, is a Principal Researcher specializing in circular economy and consumer citizenship at Laurea University of Applied Sciences in Finland. Her research interests include sustainable consumption and fashion, as well as the broader set of issues related to social and cultural sustainability in creative industries, such as diversity, equity and inclusion, social justice, and human rights.
Towards the Knowledge Repair Infrastructure for All
Iryna Kucher
Although it has been recognised that clothing repair events have a sporadic nature and do not allow the acquisition of the vast set of competences necessary to enable clothing repair, many studies on mending keep exploring such events in their attempt to identify the psychological, economic, and behavioural “barriers” to mending. Simultaneously, it is rarely considered that the larger “barrier” to mending can be linked to a general lack of systemic provisions, which could increase clothing repair. Moreover, the discourse on clothing repair is primarily Western-centred, and the repair cultures of other societies, such as the Soviet one, are underexplored. The repair in the Soviet Union can be seen as a macro-level phenomenon regulated by the state’s effective “repair strategy,” aiming to keep many people employed. To make such a strategy possible, the state developed a complex knowledge repair infrastructure (understood as higher and lower forms of education), which has partly withstood in the post-Soviet world. On these premises, the present paper compares the Ukrainian and the Danish knowledge repair infrastructures, demonstrating that, today, such infrastructures are not entirely efficient either in the post-Soviet or the Western context and, therefore, need to be (re)built. How it can be done is as complex as the question itself. Even so, this paper speculates on the avenues for the reintegration of mending teaching and learning into school education through localised repair platforms, bringing us a step closer towards the knowledge repair infrastructure for all.
Iryna Kucher, PhD (Design and Sustainability), is an eco-social designer and postdoctoral fellow at the Lab for Sustainability and Design at Design School Kolding (DSKD) in Denmark. My research lies at the intersection of sustainable design and clothing consumption. More specifically, I am interested in the ordinary consumption practices from the past as a source for sustainable futures and in transdisciplinary research methodologies and pedagogies, which bridge design research and social sciences. Within my PhD project entitled Designing Engagements with Mending: An Exploration of Clothing Repair Practices in Western and Post-Soviet Contexts, I investigated why, what, and how people mend within the domestic landscapes in Ukrainian and Danish contexts. In doing so, I employed wardrobe studies, participatory textile making, and different typologies of design research artifacts. Some of the artifacts I designed were included in the permanent collection of the Italian Observatory of Industrial Design (ADI) and were exhibited internationally. Currently, I am working on a project, Design Competences in Action, which aims to understand how the alumni of the DSKD master's PLANET programme are carrying their design and sustainability competences into society and how society welcomes these competences. In parallel, I continue to research the infrastructure of clothing repair, with the aim of reintegrating repair into education on different levels.
Location
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
Contact info Louis van den Hengel
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design website: Johanne de Heus and Marielle Schuurman