Throughout history, until barely more than a century ago, fabrics were costly and clothes were handmade, so we preserved them for years, or for generations. Like these remarkable early-eighteenth century farm laborer's trousers.
My book MEND! A Refashioning Manual and Manifesto is about the whole darn mending (and vintage) thing, from the history, to the reasons, to the practice, with copious instructions and mendspiration.
I started visibly mending many years ago, and I've been sewing all my life. My mother taught me, as her mother taught her, and so on down the generations. But despite learning how to sew properly, I've always preferred making it up as I go--and that's what VM is all about. There is no wrong way. If it works, it's correct.
1. TIME ... Sewing slows it
2. EARTH ... Every mend helps
3. MONEY ... Costs little. Is priceless
4. FASHION ... Mending is truly trending
5. RESPECT ... Honor the clothes makers
6. HISTORY ... Domestic drudgery reborn
7. SECUR •
Kate Sekules
About Kate Sekules
Kate’s mission is to spread the mend, foster community, and get us all codesigning our own wardrobes. A writer, historian, teacher, and lifelong practitioner, she is the author of MEND! A Refashioning Manual and Manifesto (Penguin, 2020), and her work has been featured in the New York Times, Selvedge, Fast Company, Vogue, and Nylon, among others, and exhibited widely. She is a professor of fashion history at Pratt Institute, a frequent lecturer, speaker, and tutor (FIT, Parsons, Winterthur, RISD, and British Museums, Textile Society of America, Custom Collaborative, etc), and the mending author for the forthcoming Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of World Textiles. She is currently completing her PhD dissertation, A History and Theory of Mending, at Bard Graduate Center, New York, after which she will have actually earned the title Dr Mend—her alter ego who dispenses “mendication” Rx in regular clothes surgeries. In former lives Kate was a journalist (New York Times, Food & Wine, The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, the Guardian…), entr
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The Art Of Mending Clothes: Interview With Kate Sekules
1. Name? Kate Sekules.
2. Occupation? Writer/ Historian/ Mender.
3. Currently reside? Brooklyn NY.
4. Where did you learn to sew? From my mother as a child in London.
5. Do you like thrift shopping? If so, what are some of your favorite stores? I live for thrift shopping. Beacon’s Closet is my church. Most true thrift these days is tragic piles of so-called Fast Fashion (I call it Big Fashion). The hunt is harder now, and the good stuff is found in places that are at least semi-curated. In England I love the specialist charity shops: Fara, Mary’s Living and Giving, Sue Ryder Retro. On the West Coast, I love Wasteland.
6. How did you get into reconstructing vintage clothing? It’s not so much reconstructing as mending, though extreme mending definitely counts as a remake. I’ve always worn old clothes and vintage (nothing but old stuff for the past 10+ years), and it needs to be maintained. That’s how it started: just from need. Then it evolved into not-boring mending, which adds to the