Designers by any other name: exploring the sociomaterial practices of vernacular garment menders

Studies around the cultures of design indicate a mutually constitutive relationship designers share with materials when in practice. However, professional designers are not the only ones experiencing proximate relations with materials. With the recent emergence of community-based repair workshops, non-professional designer practices of fixing things, like garments, reveal sites of active material tinkering aiding transitions in current clothing disposal patterns. Using qualitative research methods and a sociomaterial theoretical lens, this paper takes the mending activities of non-professional menders in communal repair workshops in the city of Helsinki, Finland, as its point of departure. The study identifies these menders as vernacular menders and explores their dynamic practices to reveal the situated, embodied, routinized yet creative process of mending. The created outputs by the vernacular menders result in what is termed as informal design and point towards extending mainstream conceptualizations on design and creativity. In such a way, suggesting new insights on sociomaterial-enabled practices emerging around the brims of professional design.Peer reviewe

Through the threaded needle : A multi-sited ethnography on the sociomateriality of garment mending practices

Commonly associated with times of hardship and austerity, garment mending has come a long way from being a domesticated practice of need to an act of commodity activism. As a backlash to the ‘throw away’ culture of fast fashion, recent years have witnessed the emergence of various public garment mending events in Western countries. Although academic interest in mending has been growing among fashion researchers, their focus has remained limited to an exploration of perspectives on mending in domestic spaces. Through this dissertation a shift is made towards an examination of processes undertaken to mend by studying existing off-the-grid mending practices that run parallel to mainstream fast-fashion systems in self-organized communal repair events in four cities. How the practice of mending comes to matter is comprehensively investigated through this dissertation. This study primarily intends to understand, observe and illustrate an alternative conceptualization, by proposing to examine mending as a sociomaterial practice. Through identifying humans and non-human or social and material forces as intimately interlaced, this study anchors itself in a pragmatic philosophical paradigm. Building on this, scholarly works that forms part of the umbrella term ‘Practice Theories’ are used to develop a non-cognitive driven understanding of the practice of mending in a clothing use context. The work draws on three years of in-depth, multi-sited ethnographic field research in 18 communal garment mending events in: Helsinki (Finland), Auckland and Wellington (New Zealand) and Edinburgh (the United Kingdom), during 2016–2018. Data is gathered through non-participant and participant observations, 67 in-depth semi- and unstructured interviews of event organizers and participants, short surveys, web research, and pictures and short video clips are used as mnemonic support. First, I strived to understand the practice of mending by identifying the matters of mending (Article 1). Then I used three effects arising from the produced affectivity of sociomaterial practices to explore mending. These conceptual effects were: creativity, learning and taste. Each effect then provided a framework through which to approach, analyse and understand the performance, learning and sustenance of mending practices. In the first instance, I categorized users as vernacular menders and understood their practices as situated, embodied and routinized, yet dynamic. The analysis revealed how when performing practices, menders methodically organized their practices while simultaneously creatively extending design in use (Article 2). In the second instance, I understood the learning practices of the vernacular menders as being anchored within the sociomateriality of practices rather than resulting from a purely cognitive process. The learned outcomes were: material learning, communal learning and environmental learning. Through the process of mending, the vernacular menders seemed to learn how to identify variations in material qualities, create communal bonds and form understandings of how to better care for their garments. The findings indicated the potential of informal learning platforms for finding sustainable local solutions to global ecological problems concerning garment waste (Article 3). In the last instance, the focus was on the role of the body and the interplay between the sensing body and the materials, to show how menders construct taste for and form an attachment to their practice over time. Their mending practices resulted in increasing the physical life, reshaping the symbolic life and redefining the aesthetic life of garments. In this way, people are seen as disrupting existing social and material orders by defying mainstream fashion practices, levelling off the playing field through active engagement in appropriating garments, mobilizing variations in dress practices, attuning to the matters that make up their clothing, while also forming an attachment to their practice (Article 4). Overall, in taking a non-cognitive approach to the study of mending, this study reveals the practices of menders as not merely reproductive but as dynamic and reflexive. In trying to understand how mending practices are performed, learned and sustained, the study also highlights the broader implications of mending that need attention in the current sustainable fashion discourse. Thus, the study invites future research to explore the practices of vernacular menders and to actively challenge fast fashion dictates towards the practices of caring, inclusivity and stewardship

Fashion consumption during COVID-19: Comparative analysis of changing acquisition practices across nine countries and implications for sustainability

The COVID-19 pandemic caused and still causes unprecedented disruptions in daily lives of billions of people globally. It affects practices and routines across all household consumption domains, including clothing consumption. Drawing on Social Practice Theory, this article explores and compares changes in clothing acquisition practices during COVID-19 across nine countries: the USA, the UK, Finland, Germany, Switzerland, Iran, Czech Republic, India, and Hong Kong SAR. Data was obtained through a standardized survey containing rated and open-ended questions, which were analyzed through descriptive quantitative analysis and inductive qualitative content analysis of open-ended questions. The results of this cross-country research indicate that all forms of fashion consumption, including more sustainable practices, have decreased during the pandemic. The most visible impacts have occurred in the material arrangements associated with fashion acquisition practices (e.g., closed physical shops, shipping disruptions, cancelled events, remote work, etc.). However, changes that result from these disruptions may be shorter-lived that changes that happened as a result of changing meanings associated with fashion consumption and its more sustainable forms and new competencies and skills acquired during the pandemic that could ensure more lasting practicing of more sustainable forms of fashion consumption

Understanding Clothing Consumption Choices in Oslo; Identifying and addressing barriers to sustainable consumption of clothes

The success of the garment and textile industry has contributed immensely to a culture of mass consumption. In 2011 Norway accounted for 16.2 billion NOK worth of clothing imports (Garberg, 2012), with households spending 23,618 NOK on clothing and foot wear yearly(SSB, 2012). However, the industry s indiscretions towards ethics and the environment have been seemingly ignored by consumers. In order to understand the reasons why consumption practices remain unaltered towards sustainable consumption, this study aims to present factors that shape and explain clothing consumption patterns in Oslo. The knowledge, awareness level and attitude of consumers towards their ecological foot print are also presented. The study was conducted with a total of 25 participants ranging from consumers to fashion designers, authors and project managers. Interviews were conducted over a three month period and all them took place in Oslo. The key findings of the study showed that consumers were not able to consume clothing sustainably due to two major factors: lack of information and price. Owing to the lack of transparency of the production line as well as the geographical separation of the manufacturing process from the location of the consumer, consumers have access to very little information about the conditions under which their clothing was made. The price element also played a key role in the deterring of consumption of sustainable clothing. As the sustainable fashion designers incurred higher costs they offered higher prices than their established competitors such as H&M & Zara, which provide lower quality but cheaper and trendy clothing. The paper further goes on to show that the onus of sustainability cannot be said to solely rely on the consumer. The government also has a key role to play in this endeavor. The government can reduce consumption in various ways, one of the proposed ways to discourage bulk and frequent buying is by increasing the taxes on fast fashion clothing brands. This money can then be used to subsidize the sustainable fashion designers clothes. The government can also run financed national level campaigns aimed at informing the public on various topics related to sustainability and clothes. All these efforts combined by all the stakeholders will help move the Norwegian consumption pattern to that of a more sustainable level through the consumption of higher quality clothing at lower frequency

"People gather for stranger things, so why not this?"

This study uses a sociomaterial practice theoretical lens to explore the learning processes and outcomes of non-professional menders emerging through their participation in communal mending workshops. Recent years have witnessed an emergence of repair workshops that seek to provide an alternative to the make-take-waste paradigm dominating the fast fashion industry in most Western countries. The paper is based on three months of extensive fieldwork in six repair workshops in two cities in New Zealand (Auckland and Wellington). Thirty-five in-depth interviews, eight follow-up surveys and field notes from participant observations were used to collect data. A triangulation of the methods and open coding helped identify three types of learning streams from the data: material learning, communal learning, and environmental learning. The learned outcomes aided in equipping participants with knowledge of how to mend, extend use of existing garments, address alternatives to garment disposal, create feelings of caring, self-reliance and empowerment in communities, and differentiate between good- and bad-quality garments. In this way, communal workshops help users to be more proactive in providing sustainable local solutions to global ecological problems and create diversified learning around sociomaterial and ecological aspects of garments and their use. This could potentially create awareness of the importance of buying better and more durable garments in the future to keep them longer in use.Peer reviewe

“Like Stitches to a Wound”: Fashioning Taste in and Through Garment Mending Practices

This article immerses the reader into the world of garment mending in communal repair events in four cities— Helsinki, Auckland, Wellington, and Edinburgh—to explore mending as a locus of taste. It engages in the discussion on taste as a reflexive activity and a sensed effect that gradually reveals itself to the practitioners engaged in the practice of mending. Here the focus is on the role of the body and the interplay between the sensing body and materials, to show how everyday menders construct a taste for and toward their practice over time. As menders actively engage with and appropriate the given design of their garments, they defy mainstream wasteful fast-fashion practices and mobilize variations in dress practices while connecting with the matter that makes up their clothing . By engaging with the notion of taste in this way, the overall aim of this article is to clarify how everyday menders become able to form an alliance with their practice, ultimately converting mending into an object of passion.Peer reviewe

Color Matters: an exploratory study on the role of color on clothing consumption choices.

It is widely acknowledged that clothing serves as our second skin. Colour plays a significant role in our choice when selecting our clothing, as well as in social and cultural realities, various rituals, everyday practices, and individual or group identities. In this study, we discuss consumer clothing choices in relation to colour based on data analysis drawn from focus group-based research. Analysis of the data revealed not only the importance that colour holds for consumers, but also that there exist different types of colour consumers and that different colour consumption attributes coexist. Moreover the study presents consumers’ colour preferences through different lenses; internal forces (colour preferences in connection to consumers’ identity, mood and body image), colour attributes (shade, matching colours, colour maintenance), external structures (colour preferences in connection to weather conditions and markets) and social factors (social acceptance and cultural context).Peer reviewe

Shared Emotional Values in Sustainable Clothing Design Approaches

Recent sustainable initiatives in fashion companies are framing design practices that challenge the traditional role of clothing designers. This preliminary study aims to open discussion on challenging traditional clothing design, through an exploration of the shared emotional values between user and designers, when designing for longevit