'I teach that mending is not about perfection – the damage is part of the transformation,’ says Celia Pym. ‘The mend is the acknowledgement that change is a part of the process.’ The textile artist – whose darning workshops hosted by lifestyle brand TOAST and the haberdashery Loop London, among others, regularly sell out – first became interested in mending in 2007, creating work that is driven by a desire to explore the emotional significance of preserving, cherishing and repairing garments that hold value and memories. Currently on show at the Textilmuseum in St Gallen, Switzerland (in Material Matters, until 21 February 2021) is a sweater worn by her mother, Hope, as a child, then by her brother and later discovered in a moth-eaten heap. She darned it with yarn from the Shetland islands, where the sweater was from, and Hope’s Sweater, 1951 (2011) now serves as meditation on the connection between the generations.
Pym’s work is an artistic intervention that is as much about the imprints of the wearer – their stories and movements – as it is about repair. In a society that places emphasis on perfection, and air-brushing away the blemishes and scars, the artist champions the philosophy that there is a power in mending in fashion, just as in life itself.
The act of mending is now gaining mainstream momentum, as the climate crisis and mass textile waste compel the next generation of British brands to find creative solutions, and consumers to rethink their choices – or sharpen their own fixing skills. The coronavirus pandemic, and the resulting slowdown in consumerism in almost all countries, has only accelerated this. Whether through sentimentalism, thrift or concern for the environment, 2020 has created the perfect conditions for the resurgence of a repair culture – for the first time since the government launched the slogan ‘Make Do and Mend’ during the Second World War.
Long before the pandemic took hold, however, designers such as Christopher Raeburn, Priya Ahluwalia, Bethany Williams and Phoebe Williams had been upending fast fashion norms by using recycled textiles and craft skills in their collections. The vital need to reform a broken system of over-production has seen them begin to transform the linear process of ‘take-make-waste’ into a circular model that sees repair as fundamental to the lifecycle of a garment.