Mending Concepts is about gaining knowledge of mending as a practice of maintaining, caring for and connecting with clothing through creativity. By playing with the material expression of a mending project the durability of garments can be extended while also giving the possibility of bringing new life to the wardrobe.

In Spring-Summer 2021 Iryna Kucher and Louise Ravnløkke set out to explore mending as a joyful fashion activity by combining historical perspectives of mending with design. Guided by the research question Can we design engagements with mending? Louise and Iryna wanted to explore how designers may support and inspire people to take on a mending practice by making it easier to grasp technical and material skills and refinement. The idea was to use creativity as a lever and a form of individual expression as they worked with the assumption that experimenting with mending as a joyful fashion activity may cultivate other interests than the dominant market-driven fashion while extending the durability of the mended garments.

Iryna and Louise studied traditional mending techniques while collecting insights of mending engagement by applying mending techniques on damaged garments and following others in their practice of mending. As a result, they developed the open-source Mending Concepts Booklet to inspire and guide the mender – both the beginner and the experienced mender.

The Mending Concepts Booklet presents the different techniques and gives a short description of the technical purpose and application of each technique. It also provides visual examples of how to use one’s creativity in combining the techniques with material aesthetics.

Moreover, the Mending Concepts Booklet presents a guide on how to initiate a mending project. The guide is called Making a Diagnosis as there are some considerations to make when starting to mend a garment, for example: What is the condition of the damage? What technique to use? What materials are suited for the mend? What possibilities for creativity can be used in this case? Etc. Making a Diagnosis guides the decision process by proposing questions in the three steps:

1. Understanding the damage
2. Understanding your way of aesthetic expression
3. Initiating your mending project

The intention with the Making a Diagnosis guideline is to make the mender aware of the possibilities of different levels of engagement with the practice: from damage control to decorative or reconstructive mending. These different types of engagement have been visualised in The Mending Spectrum to give an overview of how to merge mending techniques with aesthetic and material expressions.

Find out more about Mending Concepts; the mending experimentation and co-explorative workshops with other menders in the publications The Mending Concepts Booklet, Designing Engagements with Mending Practices, and Textile Aesthetic Dialogues of Garment Mending:

The Mending Concepts Booklet can be downloaded here

Designing Engagements with Mending Practices can be downloaded here

Textile Aesthetic Dialogues of Garment Mending can be downloaded here

Related Sources

Ravnløkke, L., 2023, “Textile Aesthetic dialogues of garment mending.” In Conference Proceedings 5th PLATE (Product Lifetime And The Environment), edt. By Niinimäki, K. & Kirsti, C., Espoo, Finland - 31 May - 2 June 2023, pp. 835-42. https://www.plateconference.org/call-for-contributions-2/

Kucher, I. & Ravnløkke, L., 2023, “Designing Engagements with Mending Practices.” In The Design School in Green Transition, edited by Ravnløkke, L. & Krog Petersen, M. Design School Kolding, Denmark. https://www.designforplanet.dk/projects/mending-concepts/

Ravnløkke, L. & Kucher, I., 2021, “The Mending Concepts Booklet.” Design School Kolding, pp. 1-21. https://www.designforplanet.dk/projects/mending-concepts/

Ravnløkke, L. & Kucher, I., 2021, “Designing Scales of Domestic Mending in Fashion.” In Conference Proceedings No 9: NORDES Conference 2021: Matters of Scale, ISSN 1604-9705. www.nordes.org

https://www.designforplanet.dk/projects/mending-concepts/