THE
THOUGHTFUL
CONSUMERS’
~ Guide to Simple Mending ~
MENDING TECHNIQUES
MATERIAL KNOWLEDGE
TEXTILE CARE
Printable Booklet
Mass consumerism is leading us towards mass extinction.
Linear consumption ideology of ~buy -> use -> throw away~ has violent material repercussions and must be rethought urgently on a massive scale. Linear chains of production rely on fracking the earth for ‘resources’ whose processes destroy delicate ecosystems on which we depend for carbon cycling, oxygen, and stable weather patterns. These ‘resources’ will be used briefly, then thrown into massive landfills who also displace and destroy ecosystems, release microplastics into our soils and water, and greenhouse gases into our atmosphere through chemical decomposition and burning.
This system also relies on violent dehumanization of factory workers, and colonialist practices in waste exportation that work to maintain systemic ignorance in privileged consumer countries. This wealthy consumer’s insecurity is vital to corporate interest, fed by advertising propaganda aiming to maintain hegemonic ideal standards in beauty, class, race and gender. Identity becomes interlinked with consumerism, driving commodity fetishism and trend chasing cultures, at the expense of the rest of the world on which they are unknowingly, and unchangeably dependent.
Overconsumption has violent environmental, socio-economic, and interpersonal repercussions, and the fashion/textile industry is only one aspect of a much larger system. This industry does have sustainable intentions; in providing everyone with basic clothing, nor in protecting our precious and damaged environment by producing this clothing through circular means.
Failed by industry, systems, and corporations, this booklet aims to give every clothing-wearing individual the tools of basic mending, and thus the power to limit their individual consumption in textile industry. Cash-driven corporations rely on our wallets, and we have the power to starve them.
By mending, we also gain the power to denounce quick consumption culture at its root, by growing meaningful, long-lasting relationships with the material objects in our life. By listening to our garments, investing time and energy to repair and care for them, meditating with them through hand stitching, and embedding them with love, we create emotional longevity, and powerful sentimentality - an adversary to wastefulness. This is our second skin, by mending, we learn to see it as part of us.
We believe the mobilization of mending knowledge is essential, and should be accessible and free to everyone. Please share, add to, photocopy, translate, plagiarize, republish this booklet.
Keep mending,
- the thoughtful consumer