On August 1, 2013, I started an art project, “Make Thrift Mend,” and vowed not to buy new clothing for an entire year. The project was my attempt as a fiber artist to engage with what’s known as social practice, or “art as action”. Ultimately, this project changed my life, redirected my work, and moved my family three thousand miles to a two-hundred-year-old farmhouse. It also positioned me in a Slow Fashion community that continues to fuel me with deeper passion, optimism, and joy.
In addition to providing food, shelter and clothing, I often overlooked the ecological impact of clothing. After having a baby, I started researching the material content of new home goods and prioritized biodegradable products over synthetics. I wasn’t a shopaholic, but I routinely sought new dresses on the sales racks of department stores. Quite frankly, I hadn’t given much thought to the source of my fibers or their impact on the planet. considered my consumer dollars implicated in a disaster like Rana Plaza.
I wanted to push “pause” on my fashion consumption. To take this fast one step deeper, I bought only secondhand garments that were biodegradable. Cotton, silk, wool, and linen quickly rose to the top of my list as I bypassed synthetics. The more I researched, the more I realized conventional cotton was problematic because of irrigation and pesticides. But I could use natural dyes on secondhand cotton, so I kept it within my parameters.
After the first year of Make Thrift Mend, I knew I had only scratched the surface of what this project could become. This was no longer just a personal art project, but an entire shift in clothing consumption and a step toward deeper sustainable living. I recommitted to one more year, although I allowed myself to purchase new clothing if it was locally made or handmade, as I wanted to support indie artisans and handmade goods.
In the first year of my project Make Thrift Mend, I focused on clothing that was ethically and ecologically made and ideally of organic cotton. At the end of the second year, I could imagine living within these parameters indefinitely. I wasn’t intent on deprivation so much as mindfulness and realignment, so lifting some of the restrictions felt important as the project kept expanding.
How do I better source my fabrics, threads, notions, and other supplies from sustainable sources? Where can I find local sources of organic fibers? This proved particularly challenging, as we had moved from urban Oakland to the rural Hudson Valley of New York and lost access to local fabric shops with inspiring selections of organic cotton, linen, wool, and wool.
I slowed down on making new garments while I reassessed which new homemade ones I really needed, wanted, and would wear the most. I like to wear linen and I like to dye linen with plant dyes, so I began researching sustainable linen and organic cotton sources online if I couldn’t source the yardage locally or secondhand. Of course, this means wrestling with the environmental complications of shipping and packaging, but at each point in sustainable living, we have to make decisions, realize there is no perfect solution (just better choices) and do the very best we can.
When I launched Make Thrift Mend, I wanted to read everything concerning sustainable fashion and find any artist, organization, or website that could help me better understand my options. I studied mending across cultures and recognized the similarities in a basic running stitch to sew Sashiko stitching and Boro garments in Japan. I became passionate about natural dyes and indigo. I even organized public events with other textile artists to highlight slow fashion techniques such as weaving, dyeing, stitching, printing, and mending in surprising public settings, such as the bustling financial district of San Francisco during lunchtime.
Mending transformed into an art form as I realized the opportunity to consider patches and stitches as design elements. My background as a fiber artist helped me find a liberating balance in mending that allowed my stitches to be functional and fashionable. When I stumbled upon Tom of Holland’s Visible Mending Programme, I fell in love with his high-contrast mending on hand-knit sweaters.
Mending came from necessity as I tore the knees in no fewer than three pairs of jeans in the first year of Make Thrift Mend. I fell in love with the patchwork, running stitches, and indigo color palette of traditional Japanese Boro. This spurred additional research on rejuvenating garments across continents through mending and natural dyes. Dozens of workshops and thousands of students later, it has become the cornerstone of my work.
I was able to see how my own mending needed improving; how one solution didn’t fit all repairs, fabrics, garments, or aesthetics; and how students wanted to locate a like-minded community at the center of Slow Fashion as much as they wanted to learn mending It also taught me that our clothes naturally age. Garments consist of fibers, and these fibers weaken with the repeated wear and friction of our bodies. We can embrace mending as part of the life cycle of clothing, and we can even celebrate it with thoughtful repairs.