The Path to Visible Mending

I am a trained fashion and textile designer and previously worked with product development and purchasing for the brands WOW and BikBok.

In 2016, I was on maternity leave and watched a lot of documentaries on TV, including The True Cost, River Blue, and the series Clothes and Quality.

It became clear that we need to have fewer clothes and take better care of them. I became very fascinated by traditional hand-stitched repairs, but couldn't imagine it becoming popular among most people.

Repairing clothes often takes a lot of time, or costs a fair bit of money, often almost as much or more than the garment purchased. It's no wonder that many choose to buy new rather than repair. If you spend time and money repairing the garment, and it simultaneously "sinks" in value because it gets a patch, it feels like a big loss. I wanted to find a way to turn this around. 

I discovered several people involved in "#visiblemending", including Tom van Deijnen and Celia Pym. I thought it was incredibly beautiful, and loved that they showed the work behind a repair by mending with contrasting colors. However, it didn't seem commercial enough to become the norm in society. But, there are examples of wear and tear and repair that have become trendy, such as ripped jeans, and elbow patches on sweaters, so maybe it's possible after all?

Kintsugi is a way to repair ceramics and porcelain with glue mixed with gold dust. This makes the object more valuable after it is broken and repaired than when it was new. We often decorate clothes with textile prints, paint, embroidery, beads, and sequins. Would it be possible to combine this with repair and have clothes that increased in value as they were more and more used and repaired?

Inspired by this, I made my first proper visible repair on my 4-year-old's pants. 

After that, I continued to repair my family's clothes in various ways under #synligreparasjon, which no one else was using at the time. It was well received, and several people in Norway have started their own versions of the phenomenon! I set myself the goal of making visible mending as normal and popular as sewing and knitting, and this online store is a step on the way there. 

I was constantly asked where I got materials etc., and I sold some kits with vintage darning thread and darning mushrooms via Instagram, which sold out very quickly. It was clear there was an interest and a market for this.

I hope the online store will make it easier for more people to repair, by finding everything they need in one place (the product range will become much larger eventually, and instructional videos will also be available!)

At the same time, I hope it can generate enough income for me to spend more and more time creating good videos and courses, recipes, patterns, step-by-step repairs that can be copied, and coming up with lots of other fun things to promote a more sustainable view of everything that decays and develops (whether we're talking about clothes or bodies!)

I have many big plans for where this can lead, but for now I am building little by little, brick by brick. If you are passionate about repair and sustainability, I hope you choose to shop here, so I can expand the concept, and I hope you tell friends and acquaintances about visible mending :) Thank you so much! 

 

 Do you want to support the work beyond shopping in the store? Following demand from several people, I have created an account on BUY ME A COFFEE so you can help the work continue without having to buy products you might not need. Thank you so much! <3

Feel free to follow @evakittelsen and @myvisiblemend on Instagram for more inspiration and to help the movement grow 😊🙏❤️

You can also join the Facebook group MyVisibleMend, which is full of tips and inspiration and many members who share advice and guide each other on their repair journey!

 <3 Eva Kittelsen