On Not Fixing Things: Ambivalence and Reparation in the Fashion Industry

The past few years have seen a resurgence in interest in mending cultures. This resurgence reflects multiple cultural shifts: growing awareness of the need for sustainable fashion practices, a response to the global instability in the post pandemic world and an act of protest against hegemonic systems which prioritise the new and unscathed. Yet for many of us repair is complicated; multiple factors making it difficult to achieve. Whilst no one would deny it is a positive act, we live in a world were the transformative or anticipatory potential of acquisition is highly prized and imperfection is often interpreted as a flaw. The fashion industry, in particular has a complicated and inconsistent relationship with repair; both increasingly vocal in its support of repair practices and unable or unwilling to make the structural changes which would facilitate a true ‘right to repair”. Thus, despite the increasing awareness and visibility of repair cultures, and fashion narratives which at least suggest a growing commitment to repair, it could be said that, oftentimes, both consumers and the industry are ambivalent about repair. This paper asks how thinking with or through ambivalence, might help us to understand fashion’s complex relationship to repair. Bringing together aspects of Klein’s (1937, 1940, 1948) writing on reparation, ambivalence and guilt with current work on repair, imperfection and shame in fashion it explores the multiple forms of ambivalence manifest in relationships to clothing and repair. Asking how ideas of repartition, guilt and loss, might help use unpack the complexity of repair for an industry built upon fantasy, and desire