In these times, ‘make-do-and-mend’ is both a clear necessity and a clear statement:
The ‘Make Do and Mend’ approach to clothing has seen a resurgence during the cost of living crisis, seventy years after the pamphlet bearing this title was issued to encourage frugality during the Second World War…
The cost of living crisis, coupled with a growing awareness about the environmental damage caused by the fashion industry, has prompted resourceful Britons to pick up a needle and thread and learn skills ranging from darning socks to sewing entire garments from scratch.
The concept of Make Do and Mend was introduced during the Second World War when the now-defunct British Ministry of Information produced a pamphlet of this name encouraging frugality. Among other essentials, new clothes were rationed in Britain from 1941 until 1949 and the Government-issued guide was considered an indispensable resource, filled with tips on how to repair and restyle existing garments. Tips included creating decorative patches to cover holes in worn garments, unpicking old knitwear to refashion into new pieces, and darning items to guard against moths.
Cost of living crisis: The rise of ‘make do and mend’, with Britons darning socks and dyeing clothes
We mustn’t get too nostalgic – as times in the 1940s were very difficult:
It’s also about ‘making a statement’:
As interest grows with TV shows, books and now a major a new exhibition in London, the idea of repairing beloved items is about more than cash…
It is a timely opening, coming as BBC TV’s Repair Shop attracts more than 7 million viewers per episode. The show marries specialist skills in restoring broken objects with the personal stories of their owners. It is comforting television in turbulent times, which Catterall [senior curator at London’s Somerset House] believes resonates in a world emerging from a pandemic and traumatised by conflict. “It ties in to the idea of care,” she says. “I love the word ‘mend’: it talks of healing and the therapeutic mindfulness of fixing something.”
Given widespread supply chain issues and the cost of living crisis, many are being driven to “make do and mend” in a way not seen since the 1940s. There is, perhaps, a disconnect between mending as necessity and repair as a fashionable badge of honour – between someone struggling to keep a school jumper from falling apart and the fashionista using statement stitching to cover a moth hole in a designer item – but it may begin to reduce the stigma. It could also make people think about the disposability of fast fashion – and the 300,000 tonnes of clothing that goes to landfill annually in the UK.
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