Mend!: A Refashioning Manual and Manifesto

Description

A hands-on manual and a history and celebration of clothes tending-and it's remarkable resurgence as art form, political statement, and path to healing the planet. For thousands of years, mending was a deep craft that has for too long been a secret history. But now it's back, bigger and better than ever. In this book Kate Sekules introduces the art of visible mending as part of an important movement to give fashion back its soul. Part manifesto, part how-to, MEND! calls for bold new ways of keeping clothes and refreshing your style. Crammed with tips, fun facts, ravishing photography, and illustrated tutorials, MEND! tells you exactly how to rescue and renew your wardrobe with flair and aplomb-and save money along the way. Whether you've never owned a needle or are an aspiring professional, MEND! gives you clear instruction and witty advice, with over thirty techniques, from classic darning and patching to cheeky new methods invented by Sekules, to help you turn every garment into a unique fashion statement. Including interviews with menders, shameful fashion industry facts, a ten-step closet mend, cheat sheets, stitch guides, moth elimination, museum conservator and vintage dealer tricks, and more, this is a book to inspire, delight, and galvanize. Sharp, funny, and incredibly timely, MEND! leads the slow fashion revolution into its next phase, where getting dressed is a joyful, creative experience for all. The environmental and human impacts of our clothing consumer habits cannot be overstated. When we continually buy and discard clothes, we are contributing to pollution, exploitation, and the waste of natural resources. Instead, we should be buying less and better, swapping, embracing vintage, and of course, mending. Sharp and incredibly timely, Mend! is a push for a slow fashion revolution in which we stop to think critically about what we buy, where it comes from, who makes it, and what it is doing to the environment, and is simultaneously a fun, crafty manual that will inspire readers to roll up their (freshly mended) sleeves and get creative, share their designs, and form radical creative communities to change closets, lives, and the world.

Kate Sekules is a writer, clothes historian, and founder of the website Refashioner. Her writing has appeared in Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Details, O- The Oprah Magazine, New York magazine, The New Yorker, the New York Times, Travel & Leisure, Departures, Saveur, and Town & Country, among other publications. She is considered one of the founders of the visible mending movement and recently obtained a Ph.D. in Costume Studies at New York University. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Penguin Press publisher Scott Moyers, and their daughter.

Praise for MEND! "Sekules brings a refreshingly fierce voice to an assemblage of topics...A prim sewing guide this is not, and I am here for it. If you want sewing basics, Sekules does offer them, but along the way she will school you on where fashion has been and where it's going (to the grave?)." -BookPage (starred) "As someone who does not know how to sew at all, I tend to shy away from any mending projects (hence the seamstress to whom I deliver damaged items for repair). But Sekules' book does a remarkable job at making me think I actually could do this myself - and even want to try. A needle is less daunting than a sewing machine, and the diagrams in the book are so clear and simple that I am inspired to tackle my next holey t-shirt." -Treehugger.com "Both practical and political, with a directory of menders whose work Sekules reveres, Mend! is a slow-fashion manifesto, a DIY manual and an argument for adding a little flair to any old garment--either by necessity or just because." -Shelf Awareness