We all made do when our clothes deserved to be mended
Every year in the course of my spring clean – not so much serene Marie Kondo, more overanxious Womble threatened with eviction under fly-tipping bylaws – a peculiar little wooden object turns up. Smooth, curved and tactile, it resembles the sort of Italian cremini that are most delicious served in a cream sauce with homemade pappardelle and is very precious to me.
“What is that?” A passing tween or teenager will ask in bafflement. Why, it is Mummy’s darning mushroom, I cry. Isn’t it marvellous? And as I inherited it from your grandmother, it is the nearest you will get to a bona fide heirloom from the distaff side of the family.
“Oh. Thank you. What’s ‘darning’?”
Where to begin? Mending and making-do is yet another life skill that has atrophied away, along with how to jug a hare and prettily decline an unwanted marriage proposal. Not that sewing was ever strictly for the ladies of the house. As recently as the Second World War, a “housewife” holdall was a component of every military man’s kit, containing a thimble, needles, balls of darning wool to repair socks, thread the same colour as his uniform, spare buttons and safety pins.
But according to handicraft champion Kirstie Allsopp, in 2020 a missing button is the number one reason why 350,000 tonnes of wearable clothing end up in UK landfill annually. What sort of useless big baby can’t replace a button? Or even take the item along to the nearest dry cleaner’s for a swift repair? In part in reaction, make-do and mend is apparently enjoying something of a comeback, particularly among ecoconscious youngsters who cannot see the irony of blaming their grandparents for destroying the planet.
It’ll be a steep hill to climb. The insane proliferation of cheap viscose garments means it’s often more cost-effective to throw something away than mend it. It’s become so significant an issue that big brands such as Whistles are offering free alterations and repairs. Allsopp thinks children should be taught how to do these things at school and I am inclined to agree – up to a point.
My husband, who attended a gusty boarding school where the chaps wore scritchy woollen beagling socks to yomp about the North York Moors, is all too familiar with the concept of darning. But, as the youngest of four boys, he developed such an aversion to the tell-tale signs of a hand-me-down that he prefers to bin his M&S socks once his big toe breaches the seam.
I scold from the sidelines but then I remember disconsolately wearing fifth-hand jeans patched so repeatedly that eventually the back pockets were sacrificed to cover the knees. It would have been humiliating except, in those dark days of tectonically slow fashion, when Primark was just a Dublin store called Penneys, everyone’s mother had a Singer sewing machine and would not hesitate to use it.
Fabrics were of better quality back then; garments were made to last because they had to last. No household was without a sewing basket, or – dare I say it? – a darling wooden darning mushroom. Can we go back to those days? I don’t know. But I fully intend to pass on my little piece of domestic history when my elder daughter moves out to marry and set up home.
Rest assured I will only give my blessing if he’s a real man who knows how to darn his socks. And indeed hers.