Fixing Fashion: The Online Community Making Mending Cool

“I have a sweater that was starting to look really shabby so I thought I should throw it away. Then I read about visible mending and the Fixing Fashion community and decided to try repairing it. Now I wear the sweater all the time.

Visible mending is about wearing your mending with pride. It’s like a badge of honour – showing that you care about your clothes and are sustaining them for as long as possible. I also think it looks really cool, adding a fun element to your clothing. You can be very creative.

I teach English at a Japanese middle school, which is quite formal, but when I wore my mends to work, my colleagues were very interested. Now we’ve made plans to do some mending together.

Because the mending is visible, with colourful contrasting thread, people notice it and want to talk about it. You don’t want to get preachy and talk about environmental topics sometimes because people can get defensive, but this sparks people’s interest and naturally leads to those conversations.