Kate Sekules wears many hats because she has A LOT of them. (coming soon: the video of her giving No Kill exclusive access to “The Library,” her racks and racks of AMAZING vintage) The massive collection of clothes, which fills an entire Brooklyn basement and spans all closets of her home, is the evolution of her famed Refashioner.com, the first-of-its-kind online clothing swap Sekules founded in 2009.
Since then, the writer-and-fashionista became the celebrated author of the book MEND! A Refashioning Manual & Manifesto, a manifesto and a detailed how-to for mending old garments to preserve them and never let them go to landfill. These days, she focuses on hosting in-person swaps and mending events while obtaining her PhD at the Bard Graduate Center—guess what her thesis is about?—and teaching fashion history at Pratt, as well as mending history and theory. Somehow, it still feels like it’s only the beginning. As she sees it, there’s a whole broken world to stitch back together.
What is mending? What is visible mending?
To mend: verb: to repair (something that is broken or damaged). To mend clothing: stitch up and patch any wear and tear. To mend visibly: to make your stitches and patches obvious, attention-attracting, if not front-and-center—as Sekules puts it, “visible in every possible way”—so that people know your item is old and damaged but also constantly in a state of love and renewal. If you mend something, you rarely have to throw it away. A garment can almost continually be made new via innovative patches, fun stitching, and additions. It’s a preservation practice, unlike today’s habit of disposing of clothes once they are mildly old.
“Suppose everyone mended clothes, fabrics, textiles; how would that change how they feel and think?” Sekules ponders.
Would we learn that we don’t always have to buy new things and can add our flair to an item through our choice of stitching or patchwork? Would we (re)gain a sense of autonomy when it comes to our clothing? Would we be reminded of the labor, the handiwork, and the maintenance that goes into making garments, as the practice makes visible what is otherwise invisible labor?
For years, Sekules has been trying to make mending more of a thing and a more acceptable thing. It’s more than a cutesy and handmade craft; it is a fashion statement.
“We are [currently] in a place where we don’t do it, and we don’t see why we should because we can just get new stuff. And this is pervasive throughout all sorts of thinking, including politically…” Sekules suggests that shared group mending practices could help heal current tears in the fabric of society.
A Comme des Garcons scarf that has been visibly mended by Kate. Note the yellow thread that creates circles by outline the holes instead of covering them up.
From Refashioner.com to Clothing Swaps IRL
Sekules had been going to and hosting clothing swaps “all her life” back in London when in 2009, she founded Refashioner, an online swap shop way ahead of its time. The practice of trading clothes was less trendy than it is today, but the site had 10,000 vetted members. All pieces were analyzed for style and suitability and had to have a story, says Sekules. Listing an item for swap required telling that story so that the next wearer could understand the journey and significance of the garment.
“We wanted the good stuff in the back of the closet that’s trapped. It was about the love of the gorgeous clothes and [their] stories,” she says.
Now, Kate cohosts an in-person swap called Dress Go Round. “There’s a desperate hunger for real life, tactile, social experiences,” she says. The mantra behind both the original .com and the IRL swaps is that one never has to buy anything new. However, in-person swaps are especially the opposite of fast fashion e-commerce. Swappers interact with the clothes, meet the previous wearer, and preserve—and contribute to—a history.
Dirty v. Patina: Preservation in the Library?
No Kill had the fantastic privilege of visiting Kate’s “Library,” her multi-floored archive of incredible vintage clothing. Sekules grew up in London, where she had access to the secondhand racks of up-and-coming go-tos in Camden Market and Notting Hill. Sekules shared that originally vintage was popular with hippies—the “military, Sergeant Pepper sort of thing” as well as the “granny look” and the “hippie trail,” that soul-searching journey to India and South Asian countries, where vendors would buy up cheap jewelry and bring it back to London and sell it as “ethnic.” After that came the punk era. In short, wearing secondhand clothing wasn’t widespread or acceptable in the “mainstream, sort of normal world.” Many saw it—as some still do today—as dusty and dingy. Sekules’ mom was concerned that old clothing from the street might have fleas.
Her early practice of collecting these “dirty and icky” things would inform her eventual practice of mending—that is, of preserving items that others see as not worth much.
Just a few of the rare finds seen in the library: On the left is a Mountain Artisans skirt, on the right is a ladybug print dress by Biba
To mend cannot become a trend: scaling is not the point
“Mending is so trendy that it is in danger of going out of style,” worries Sekules. She cites Coach, Margiela, Dover Street Market, and a small brand called Raquel Allegra as just a few brands that make new items and then add little patches, stitches, or holes to make them look old and worn. If we see mending as just another trend, we’ll tire of it and return to the new-new-new cycle in a couple of seasons.
She also pointed to “fake mending” on TikTok.
When asked if mending is a business model, Sekules maintains that the point is not to grow a business. According to Sekules, mending is (or should be) about degrowth.
“It couldn’t be more opposed to the motivation of any kind of commercial operation,” she explains, “it cannot scale, and it cannot be owned, and it cannot be done other than by hand, even if it’s by machine.”
Even the curtains get the Visible Mend treatment. Her cat Stephen Sondheim approves!
Swaps, even if online, also aren’t inherently a good business model; Sekules believes it’s very challenging to make a consumer-to-consumer (C2C) model profitable, and therefore it can’t grow. Of course, not growing is the point.
Her solution is “iteration.”
“You just have lots and lots and lots and lots of little ones,” she says—thousands of little storefronts for swapping, mending, vintage, etc., all over the place so that mini ecosystems can be built that will sustain themselves, i.e., not depend on the giant vortex of capitalist growth from an ivory tower. Sekules does not envision mending businesses, meetups, etc., to become businesses beyond a specific size.
“That is the only way we can save the world,” she says, outlining the significant shifts that would have to happen for the iteration economy to be a viable model: “You’d have to get all those empty storefronts that are going to the banks—or stay empty because someone’s profiting—they get used for little operations or pop-ups, and then people understand that what’s valuable are unique things. It’s what they want. Everyone wants to look unique…”
On Education: The Discipline of Mending
Is Mending a new field of study?
As an expert and a PhD candidate, Sekules lectures at Parsons, Pratt Institute, and the Bard Graduate Center. At Parsons, she teaches a course called Mending Fashion, a first for a college curriculum. It focuses on mending as a concept structurally and systematically and as a literal practice.
Sekules is excited to see fashion students interested in mending and slow fashion and taking these ideals into their careers. She says that 10 years ago, there was a great deal of misunderstanding about secondhand and clothing preservation as a serious practice.
“I’d always get people to, you know, hands up if you buy secondhand, and they didn’t. And now no one doesn’t, right?” she says. “It’s extremely changed. I’ve been in front of students and seen the change and the evolution of their thinking, and it’s quite marked how much [mending and slow fashion] got out there. So I think it is going to be taught if it isn’t now…”
Sekules is keen to see more individual professors include the field in their curricula. As for a pedagogical pivot from the higher-ups, she optimistically sees that as inevitable, since students will eventually go on to teach.
She, too, will keep on teaching. “I have the obligation to found a discipline. I’m not personally doing it, but we collectively are cohering a load of things that belong in a discrete discipline academically: mending studies, critical mending, or critical mending studies.
Where to find Kate
Instagram
Refashioner website (archive of first online swap)
Visible Mending website
Buy her book!
Also, if in Brooklyn look for the Darn it! Mending Club at Textile Arts Center that Kate co-hosts with Hekima of Black Girls Sew + Martina Cox.
Kate with her punching bag in the library. (#IYKYK)
–Anne Elizabeth Whiting
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