Visible mending as an everyday practice

This week, I'm going to advocate for visible mending as an easily accessible everyday skill — not just some niche crafty hobby, but a practice that can be productively integrated into general clothing maintenance, like the almost ubiquitous darning of socks was in the past. And honestly, some people are truly visible-mending artists. Why repairing used to be the default and what made it soFor most of history, repairing clothing wasn't considered an option or a statement; it was just a given. Textiles were expensive and laborious to produce, and mending was a natural part of clothes care. The advent of industrialisation, and more specifically fast fashion (guilty as charged!), changed the situation in that it became much easier and more affordable to replace worn-out garments, thus rendering mending techniques useless and old-fashioned. Visible mending is a reaction to this state of affairs, a rebuke to the idea that clothing repair is somehow not a desirable practice, by celebrating…