Care and Production of Clothing in Norwegian Homes: Environmental Implications of Mending and Making Practices

Abstract

Mending, re-design, and altering are alternatives for prolonging the use period of clothing. It is a common assumption that nobody mends clothing anymore in Western societies. This paper studies Norwegian consumers' clothing mending and making practices. We ask how common the different mending and making activities are, has this changed during the past several years, who are the clothing menders and makers, and further, are these practices related to consumers' environmental opinions? We build on three quantitative surveys in Norway from 2010, 2011, and 2017. Many consumers do mend their clothing at least occasionally, especially the simpler tasks, such as sewing on a button and fixing an unravelled seam. Women and the elderly are more active in making and mending, whereas the young are bit more likely to make something new out of old clothing. The mending activities were correlated with respondents' environmental opinions. Mending clothes is more common than is usually assumed. Knowledge of current practices and barriers for clothing mending enables us to recommend measures that can potentially increase the use time of clothing. These results can be beneficial in clothing design, home economics, and crafts education as well as understanding consumer behavior and making policies that aim at environmental improvements within clothing consumption.

Consumer Perceptions Related to Clothing Repair and Community Mending Events: A Circular Economy Perspective

“…The findings of this study provide important insight into the motivations and barriers toward clothes mending in the U.S. context. Compared to the findings of other countries like Norway [19], where approximately two-thirds (65%) of consumers have undertaken at least one mending or making task in 2017, U.S. consumers' engagement in clothing repair is minimal (30%). In conjunction with other studies, the top barriers related to mending included the high costs associated with clothing repair, not having the necessary skills, and the idea that clothing repair is a time-consuming activity [20,32,59].…”

“…This study uses clothing "repair" and "mend" interchangeably and broadly defines clothing repair/mending as tasks undertaken to extend the use period of clothing that is damaged and/or does not fit (e.g., fix rips, sew buttons, altering the fit of the garment). This definition closely follows previous studies undertaken in the clothing context [19,23,24]. This is one of the first studies examining clothes mending in a U.S. context.…”

“…Further, McGrath's [36] study of U.S. millennials indicated that they were more likely to use clothes longer and buy less if they were better at repairing or making clothes. This study addresses the call for further investigations by Laitala and Klepp [19], as it relates to the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to clothing repair in the U.S. context. The following relationships are hypothesized: Hypothesis 3 (H3a).…”

“…This has resulted in huge amounts of slightly damaged clothes also ending up landfills (see, for example, [28][29][30][31][32][33]). Among the most commonly cited reasons for not repairing clothes in qualitative studies, consumers have reported the high costs associated with repair, which is a time-consuming activity requiring a high level of skill [18,19,29]. Repaired clothes also have negative connotations, considering clothing repair as "women's work", a domestic and unnecessary chore, and a sign of poverty.…”

“…Previous qualitative studies [18][19][20] undertaken in countries such as the U.K., Norway, Scotland, and other Nordic countries identified that lack of time and repair skills and the high costs associated with clothing repair discourage consumers from engaging in clothes mending practices. However, there has been very minimal research conducted to understand U.S. consumers' motivations and barriers to engage in clothes repair.…”