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Author: Ismay Mummery

How can we encourage people to mend their clothes?

Updated Thursday, 4 June 2026

Sustainable fashion research in the design school is investigating people mending their clothes and how to encourage it to extend garment life.

Find out more about The Open University's Environment courses and qualifications.

How many of your socks have holes in them?

Have you ever thrown away a t-shirt just because it had a tiny hole? Or maybe tossed out a pair of trousers because a button popped off? If you have – you're not alone. The truth is most of us were never taught how to fix our clothes. And even if we wanted to, we might not know where to go to get help.

On top of that, with ultra-fast fashion brands like Shein offering super cheap clothes delivered to your door the next day, it can feel easier to just buy something new. Who has the time, the tools, or the energy to sew anymore?

But, what if we did take the time?

What if we could keep wearing that cozy jumper our gran knitted for us? Or fix our favourite dress instead of watching it head off to landfill? What if that expensive winter coat just needed a patch or a new zip, and we gave it a second life?

Mending lets us keep the clothes that matter

Mending clothes lets us keep the stories and memories they carry. And it’s not just good for us – it’s good for the planet too. Fixing our clothes reduces waste, saves money, and helps cut down the fashion industry’s massive carbon footprint.

Did you know:  

  • a truckload of textile waste is sent to landfill or incinerated every second?
  • vast mountains of discarded clothing in developing nations are now so big, they can be seen from space?
  • fashion and textiles create more carbon emissions than all aviation and shipping combined?

That’s the scale of the problem. But here’s the exciting part – you can do something about it.

Rethinking repair: what the research tells us

Here’s what was found:

  • Mending skills are disappearing: most of us were never taught how to sew. Each generation is losing more hands-on knowledge about how to repair things.
  • Role models really matter: if your mum, gran, or even a teacher showed you how to fix something, you're much more likely to try it yourself.
  • Mending is often hidden: it tends to happen behind closed doors – at home, in community groups, or tucked away in workshops. So, we don’t see it, and we don’t always think of it as an option.

A person mending clothes.

Meet the menders

Not everyone mends for the same reasons. To make sense of the data, a set of personas was created – imaginary but realistic characters that represent real patterns of behaviour. Let’s introduce them:

  • The eco mender: mends to protect the planet
  • The craft mender: loves turning repairs into creative projects
  • The occasional mender: just fixes what they need, when they need it
  • The delegating mender: prefers someone else to do the fixing
  • The heritage mender: learns from traditions and passes them on
  • The serviced mender: takes things to professionals to get the job done.

These personas show us that a one-size-fits-all solution won’t work. A repair café might be perfect for the craft mender, but not very appealing to the delegating mender or someone who’s never picked up a needle.

So what do we do?

Stitching together a solution

To build a mending mindset across society, we need to bring together lots of threads. Here are just a few ideas:

  • Bring back sewing in schools, so future generations grow up knowing how to mend.
  • Make repair more visible through community events, evening classes, and mending groups.
  • Adapt repair cafés to include “clothing clinics,” focusing on fashion repair.
  • Create a national Mending Alliance to support all the brilliant people already doing this work.
  • And to fund it all? Introduce a tax on fast fashion giants to support local, sustainable repair initiatives.
  • Use the mending personas to design these interventions so they appeal and engage people.

So what will you do?

Next time you get a hole in your jeans or a rip in your sleeve – pause. Could you fix it? Could someone help you? Could this small act, this tiny stitch, be part of something much bigger?

Because in the end, mending isn’t just about clothes. It’s about caring for our belongings, for the planet, and for each other.

Don’t ditch it – stitch it!

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