Renewable fashion: Why is mending fashionable?

When there comes a point where our relationship with clothes breaks down or dies, new ways to combat this obsolescence lurked by overproduction and climate dystopia appear. The mending or repair technique then appears to shed light on all that darkness, as the next radical movement in a sustainable fashion. Let’s delve into this hot trend that deconstructs fashion through repair.

The time has come for renewable fashion. The one that promotes the eco-futuristic narrative based on restoration in order to last forever, considering that the world currently consumes about 80 billion garments, according to data from Fashion Revolution.

Mending is thus an escape route from all the toxicity promoted by the fast fashion culture and the intermittent rejection of clothing by a system based on micro-trends that dictate fashion. After all, the lack of education on sewing and textiles, and the fact of not having those traditional skills for the longevity of items, hinder the fact that we can change those consumption habits despite the latent cult of DIY generated by the new generations.

@oldloserinbrooklyn

Another mended haul, secondhand Chanel shoes edition. This is the most ive ever asked of my cobbler and they went above and beyond for me. Cant recommend Fulton Cobbler in Bedstuy enough. #cobbler #designershoehaul #chanel #chanelshoes #mended #fashion #greenscreen #greenscreenvideo

♬ Blue Blood – Heinz Kiessling

REBUILDING FASHION

Within this new era in which inflation becomes a pretext for absolutely everything, luxury brands are lowering costs by using cheaper materials, making up all those items through an opaque narrative, and many times, a non-existent quality.

A reality that projects the trend forecaster, Mandy Lee, through TikTok videos in which she shows the public her shoes from brands like Chanel or Margiela, and all the adjustments they need, such as Tabi Boots, in which one of them has lost the heel cap with only four weeks of use. A whole series of clips that inspire many people to get into this DIY technique with which to experiment with fashion, as it shows the effects of before and after, showing the process and all the changes.

Thus, all those fashion items that break due to poor fiber quality, frenetic production and lack of knowledge about clothing care, would lay the groundwork for rebuilding this problem within the system. One that leads to the fact that now precisely mending is a trend, when the luxury product itself should not have all these kinds of flaws.

In this sense, luxury brands such as Bottega Veneta began to offer lifetime warranties on their bags through a philosophy with which to promote this longevity and repair against the purchase of new items. A discourse with which to open up to traditional sewing and tailoring techniques such as darning, and to put into practice this curatorial relationship with clothing.