Are we all Madame Defarge now?

I get lots of mending content in my social media and it is wonderfully subversive. Mending is a political act. Mending is an act of defiance. Mending is an act of rebellion. Mending is standing up to the man. Um…. isn’t mending sitting with something in your lap and quietly moving your hands using inexpensive tools to sew on a button or to repair a hole? Well, yes and yes. Who told all these people to flip the narrative by coming in with all of this aggressive ‘tear the house down’ language? We are talking about patching and darning, are we not? But I think it is needed and accurate and brilliant and in fact I am the one who is late to this party. Throughout A Tale of Two Cities, Madame Thérèse Defarge quietly knits a secret registry of names of members of the aristocracy against whom she seeks revenge. The code in her stitches, the list, is decipherable only by her husband. Today isn’t the first time that people without a clear, tangible platform for communication did something powerful and subversive.

People who champion mending recognize that this quiet act, accompanied by a cup of tea, a glass of wine, a gummy, a Jane Austen audiobook, whatever, is how we end the cycle of linear production of not great clothing. We are saying we are not going to spend our money, money which we either don’t have, or which we could otherwise invest in our own future, or in our kids’ future, or in making an extra mortgage payment, on new clothing. We are saying that we have given brands enough of our money. And that when we feel however we need to feel to be convinced by our phones or by our friends who have been convinced by their phones that we need to buy something new, we pause. We remain still and say “hold on one moment, I have two feet and presently own 37 pairs of shoes which could be worn in this current weather.” We pause and say “I have two legs and already own 14 pairs of long denim.”OK We recognize there may be other ways to express ourselves and there may be other ways to soothe ourselves than through consumption.

In Ohio, the average monthly mortgage payment sits closer to $1,780. That means the estimated $1,400 an individual spends on clothes each year is nearly an entire month’s housing payment just vaporized into closets and waste streams. When we look at systems change, we have to look at what we are sacrificing to maintain the status quo.

Mending is in this way truly a war against hyper-consumerism. I feel like such an imposter schmuck when I open my mouth and say things like ‘maybe capitalism is the problem’. Who am I, who worked very devotedly (and quite happily it must be said) for many years for companies which were part of the capitalist system, and dressed nicely, and was able to raise my family and pay for my kids’ college and create a nice life for myself… who am I now to turn around and criticize the very system from which I blissfully profited for decades? Imposter. Schmuck.

But also capitalism may be the problem. I can’t do much about the existence of this vast linear economy in the remaining 20 years or so that I plan to be a productive member of society. But I can, like you, make radical choices about my consumption and also about what I do with the clothing I already own, or that has already been bought, or that I come across which, like a little wounded bird, would survive and thrive with just a little bit of mending or cleaning or general care? Because if we don’t offer that care, we are simply capitulating to a math problem designed to beat us.

The modern apparel industry operates on a financial model that depends on continuous, high-volume consumption. When brands maintain gross margins between 50% and 60%, the financial cost of overproducing inventory is remarkably low. As a result, companies can comfortably absorb the cost of a 20% to 30% surplus buffer going unsold, as the primary business objective is maximizing returns for shareholders and securing corporate profitability.

However, the system contains no mechanism for managing the lifecycle of the waste it generates. Because many of these garments are synthetic and do not biodegrade, they create a permanent environmental burden—one that is disproportionately externalized onto developing nations and lower-income communities, which serve as the final dumping grounds for the global textile trade.

I can not single handedly upend the system in which we live. But I can make radical personal choices and vote for change with my actions and quiet leadership.

So sometimes I sit and mend things. I offer mending workshops in my town. I’m learning different forms of visible mending. I practice darning. I embroider over stains. Sometimes what I embroider is a rather irreverent message. Sometimes it is a flower. Or is it just a flower?

Thanks for reading.

Yours,

Madame Goldsand