When we were kids, my twin sister tore her ski bibs getting off a ski lift. We grew up in the South and didn’t have a lot of extra money, so skiing wasn’t something we did very often – or knew how to do particularly well. Buying another pair of ski pants for the occasional trip wasn’t practical.
Luckily for my sister, no one blinked when she started sporting a very stylish sew-on patch over the tear. It featured a cute little peanut character saying, “Nuts Ski Too.”
Just a few years later – and continuing for decades – kids would have teased her mercilessly for wearing a patch like that. By then, if you repaired your clothes at all, you tried to hide the evidence. A visible repair might suggest that you couldn’t afford something new.
But before that shift, no one cared. Frankly, the patch gave her all-white ski bibs a splash of color and a lot more character.
In the latest example of “everything old is new again,” the stigma around visibly repaired clothing has faded again.
With the rise of cheap fast fashion over the past 25-30 years, it’s become tempting to just replace clothes as soon as they get too worn or damaged. But with a reported 92 million tons of textile waste burned or sent to a landfill every year, many climate-conscious consumers are rethinking what’s possible for older pieces of clothing.
Today, visible mending is surging in popularity. Instead of disguising tears, holes or stains, people call attention to them with colorful patches, intentional stitching or creatively placed beads and other accents.
Posts tagged #visiblemending have attracted over 56 million views on TikTok, while Pinterest searches related to secondhand repair have skyrocketed. In recent years, a wave of books and online videos have come out teaching people how to mend creatively. A Vogue article published in September highlighted efforts in Ghana and the U.K. to transform used clothing into higher-value pieces – evidence that the practice is influencing the broader fashion industry.
The idea of highlighting flaws rather than hiding them isn’t new.
In Japan, kintsugi uses lacquer dusted or mixed with gold to emphasize the cracks in expensive ceramic dishes instead of throwing a broken item away. The imperfections are viewed as part of the piece’s beauty and an important record of its history.
Also from Japan, shashiko is a centuries-old folk embroidery technique that uses running stitches to reinforce work clothes that needed to last. Today, similar stitching appears in rows or patterns on clothing and home textiles as a design statement. Some groups, such as the noncommercial brand Gold Joinery, even invite people to use gold threads as a nod to kintsugi.
Although kintsugi and shashiko emerged from different parts of Japanese culture, they share a powerful idea: a repair doesn’t have to disappear. It can become part of what makes something unique and distinctive.
Some retailers are embracing that idea directly.
To promote sustainability, outdoor clothing brand Patagonia offers an at-home repair kit, replacement trim items and instructions for DIY repair of some of its garments. Customers are encouraged to view repairs as a normal part of a garment extended life – and to share pictures of the results online.
In a world where social media often rewards the polished and seemingly perfect, intentionally adding both utility and beauty to something that’s been damaged or worn down is refreshing.
Maybe visible mending has something to teach us beyond clothing.
What if we treated our own differences and imperfect histories not as flaws to conceal, but as evidence of our uniqueness and resilience? Instead of pushing everyone to look perfect or the same, what if we made room for what makes each of us unmistakably ourselves?
My sister’s ski bibs were never ruined. They were repaired. And with one small patch, they had more character than ever before.
We don’t have to hide the things that make us different, or fit someone else’s idea of what we’re supposed to look like or do. We can show up as ourselves – and use what makes us unique to make a difference in the world around us.
So this week, notice where you’re holding back a little piece of yourself because you think it doesn’t conform. What if you let it be part of what you bring to the world?
And if that makes you think of something (or someone) you’d like to share, drop it in the comments or send it to contact@howsyourimpact.com. You might just help someone else see their own “imperfections” a little differently.
Please share this post with your people—and remember that YOU MATTER.
(Photo/Artem Beliaikin)
