Kinga Zablocka is one of the Master students at OsloMet’s Master of Aesthetic Practices in Society (Fashion and Society), Department of Art, Design and Drama. Professor in Clothing and Sustainability, Ingun Grimstad Klepp, has been one of her supervisors on her Master’s thesis, Is it worth it? An exploration of clothing repair and value using wardrobe studies.
Kinga Zablocka has explored what garments are being repaired and why and how repair affects the value of the clothes. Similar to the PhD in Change, Zablocka has interviewed couples and used wardrobe studies as the method. Four Norwegian couples between the ages of 19 and 34 have explained how and why they have or haven’t repaired their garments and how repair affects value both before and after repair. This is therefore a dive into a younger generation’s thoughts and praxis which might be important for the future of repair.
The most significant barrier to repairing for those in the study was a lack of competence, in line with the work of Iryna Kucher and others. An important contribution of the thesis is that repair is not only seen as a technical problem but also connected to the value of the garments in a broader sense, where both wearer-clothing relationships and social and economic values are included.
The low price of fast fashion could be used as an excuse not to repair a garment She contributes to both the knowledge of repair and clothing processes in general and ends her Master’s with a discussion of the findings related to the EU Textile strategy. Repair is not only an important part of clothing consumption, but also policy.
Kinga Zablocka has besides being supervised by Ingun Grimstad Klepp, also been supervised by Joanne Cramer, and is part of the Change project. Klepp is hopeful that it will be possible for Zablocka to continue with this work and research.
The photo was taken at the Master exhibit where Zablocka (to the right) let the public decide on some repairs with varying degrees of visibility. Does the repair contribute to increasing the value of the garment or not?
April 8th, 2024, Iryna Kucher defended her PhD “Designing Engagements with Mending. An Exploration of Amateur Clothing Repair: Practices in Western and Post-Soviet contexts”.
Iryna was a guest lecturer at Consumption Research Norway SIFO a period as research fellow, she has used wardrobe studies as a method and Ingun was her first opponent. This was therefore not just an important day for Iryna, but also for the clothing researchers at SIFO – and clothing research in general.
Alongside Ingun in the assessment committee, was Senior Researcher Olga Gurova, Laurea University of Applied Sciences, Helsinki, Finland and Design School Kolding’s own emerita Vibeke Riisberg. The main supervisor had been Ulla Ræbild, and also Amy Twigger Holroyd, who followed online.
The thesis is a broad and deep dive into the culture of mending. By looking at the history of clothing consumption in post-Soviet and in the Western world, it describes how different histories have formed ideologies of consumption and clothing repair practices in people’s everyday life. Iryna contributes with lifting the description on repair out of a mainly Western-centred perspective. She has used a variety of literature and sources in Russian, Italian and Nordic languages, so not only English, being so often the case. The thesis has surprisingly no research question, but instead does a deep dive into:
1) Understand how mending practices are conceptualised in Western and post-Soviet contexts.
2) Understand what kind of infrastructures, devices, and materials facilitate the enactment of mending practices.
3) Understand what competences are employed when mending practices are enacted and what contributes to successful clothing repair.
Skål for Iryna! Surrounded by Ingun, Vibeke and Olga in the assessment committee.
The methodology is original and rich, and brings design research, the social sciences and wardrobe studies together. Her wardrobe study has focused on what has been repaired – and what hasn’t been repaired – as much other research. An original contribution here is that this is not only done by the candidate’s main informants, but that together with their mothers or other older relatives, they did a similar exercise with the older generation. This gives the opportunity to look at the informants’ background and training and thus the relationship to repair over time. It is ambitious to draw in both comparisons in time and space. Iryna received a lot of praise for this during the defense, but also critical questions as she has gone to great lengths to summarize and simplify differences. After all, the history of repair is both invisible and full of holes, and it is easy to assert what are, strictly speaking, assumptions.
Contributions from the work that will probably be cited and develop further understanding are the concepts seamless, discreet and expressive approaches to clothing repair, instead of visible and invisible, which are more commonly used. Iryna’s point is that both invisible and expressive (what is often discussed under visible mending) require special expertise, while discreet is what most people try to achieve in private repairs – which is the vast majority.
It is also interesting how different groups do the same thing, e.g. repair for different reasons. «Post-Soviet ‘mothers’, who used to live in the Soviet repair society, which was characterised by scarcity, still associate mending with necessity. In contrast, Western ‘daughters’, who live in a time of eco-anxiety, associate mending with sustainability”. The quote shows how comparing across generations and consumer cultures (post-Soviet and Western) makes sense. Also interesting from a SIFO perspective is Iryna’s discussion of the importance of home economics – i.e. training in needlework and repair at school. This is an important part of her description of how the infrastructure around repair disappeared in both the Western and post-Soviet context. In order to rebuild repair, a build-up of this infrastructure is needed, which is not only a willingness to teach, but also workshops in schools, sewing machines, textbooks, etc.
Many had found their way to the design school’s premises – and others followed the event online. Iryna’s work is nuanced, particularly well-presented visually and exciting, as already stated, a big day for clothing research.
Mending, re-design, and altering are alternatives for prolonging the use period of clothing. It is a common assumption that nobody mends clothing anymore in Western societies. This paper studies Norwegian consumers’ clothing mending and making practices. We ask how common the different mending and making activities are, has this changed during the past several years, who are the clothing menders and makers, and further, are these practices related to consumers environmental opinions?
We build on three quantitative surveys in Norway from 2010, 2011, and 2017. Many consumers do mend their clothing at least occasionally, especially the simpler tasks, such as sewing on a button and fixing an unravelled seam. Women and the elderly are more active in making and mending, whereas the young are a bit more likely to make something new out of old clothing. The mending activities were correlated with respondents’ environmental opinions. Mending clothes is more common than is usually assumed. Knowledge of current practices and barriers for clothing mending enables us to recommend measures that can potentially increase the use time of clothing. These results can be beneficial in clothing design, home economics, and crafts education as well as understanding consumer behavior and making policies that aim at environmental improvements within clothing consumption.
Many life cycle assessment studies document that the use period is the most resource-demanding phase during the clothing life cycle. In this paper, we discuss how design can help to reduce the environmental impacts of clothing. Motives behind clothing disposal, acquisition practices and maintenance habits are analysed based on two surveys, qualitative interviews of households, and examination of disposed clothing. The main reasons for clothing disposal were changes in garments, followed by size and fit issues, taste-related unsuitability, situational reasons, functional shortcomings and fashion or style changes. Several design solutions can enable the users to keep and use the clothes longer, and reduce the need for laundering, thus potentially decreasing the total environmental effects of clothing consumption.
