Designing textiles and clothes for fashion libraries will require new design and systems thinking TT8. The constant wearing down of the businesses assets will mean mending is essential. Mending clothes is not a new process, nor is the idea of stitching as a reparational experience for mind and body. But what is a repairing process for a material?
The very visible mends in this jumper highlight practiced wardrobe maintenance, visibly wrought through the colours and textures of the fixing yarn. This act brought the jumper far from its neutral garment origins and further from the coat of a sheep. The ‘slogan’ of repair embedded into the garment sites the jumper as activism TT10.
As a repaired woolen garment, it is warm, cosy and comfortable, totally wearable and fit for purpose. Reflecting on the importance of mono-materiality for post-user recycling TT2, this jumper proposes that we think about other layers of mono-materiality – what are the essences of wool? Where does it come from and how? What are its personality traits and quirks? What else do we use it for? Wool is heavily processed before fabrication. Can the form of the jumper be unmade; can the wool be repaired back to its raw form TT6?
A conceptual repair kit and a factual repair kit facilitate and inform remaking and unmaking processes, and the affect of repair on the material future of the garment.
‘Love is that state in which the thought process, as time, has completely ceased. Where love is, there is transformation. Without love, revolution has no meaning, for then revolution is merely destruction, decay, a greater and greater ever-mounting misery. Where there is love there is revolution because love is transformation from moment to moment.’ Krishnamurti 1954
Prof. Jonathan Chapman | 22 July 2013
Dr. Otto von Busch | 22 July 2013