Layers of Repair—On Mending, Care, and Aesthetics of Affect

Abstract

Repair has recently gained attention in both academic and societal activities in the global north context, part of a collective ongoing effort to rethink practices around fashion, clothing and textiles. Much of these efforts focus on the community building and sustainability related aspects of repair, offering good grounds to the discussion of repair as a tool to foster more sustainable ways to engage with clothing and textiles. In this work we turn to what happens between menders and the things they repair, an intimate and enmeshed relationship, broadening the discussion. This article observes repair from an autoethnographic first person narrative complemented with other menders’ observations, collected through longitudinal studies via “patient cards.” It investigates how a mender’s esthetic perceptions of repaired garments evolve through time from the lens of theories of affect. The results show that the act of repair facilitates an accumulation of layers of meanings, adding complexity to the symbolic value of repaired garments as well as their agencies. This accumulation of layers changes various dimensions of esthetics in both garments and wearers, distancing these objects from an esthetic of seriality toward an esthetic of affects.