Designing Engagements with Mending
PhD Defense
With the overall aim to address (un)sustainability in the fashion sector, Iryna Kucher's PhD project explores why, what, and how people mend within the domestic landscapes in two different contexts: Western and (post)-Soviet. These contexts were chosen due to the opposition of the Western world, defined by sociologists as a 'throwaway society,' and the Soviet world, defined by sociologists as a 'repair society.' Before the recent mending upsurge in the Western world, resourceful clothing consumption practices were progressively fading away due to the lack of application. At the same time, due to the Soviet system's specific traits, the practices of 'unintended but real sustainability' did not have enough time to vanish and still reside within post-Soviet landscapes.
Driven by the idea that the larger 'barrier' to mending could be linked to a general lack of systemic provisions needed to support the practices of clothing repair, through the lens of practice theory, which sees practices as linked to larger social and material structures where context and practice are co-constituted, and by adopting a bricolage methodology, which combines wardrobe studies, participatory textile making, and design research artifacts, Iryna Kucher carried out a comparative qualitative study involving a group of participants from Denmark (to represent the Western perspective on clothing repair) and Ukraine (to represent the (post)-Soviet context).
The overall study allowed Kucher to unravel the differences between mending practices in space and time in two different contexts, provided an understanding of the complex interplay of different practice elements and their impact on the practice under study, and helped to identify mending resources that can enable clothing repair. Among the main findings of this PhD study are the nuanced understanding of different cultures of clothing repair in Western and post-Soviet contexts; categorisations of clothing repair and its differentiation from other mending-related practices; the processes and competences required for the enactment of mending; and the repair infrastructure, comprising repair services and clothing repair education, which allow for labour division between amateurs and professionals and enable the access to repair knowledge and services for all.
Programme 8 April 2024
13.00: Welcome / Associate Professor Sune Klok Gudiksen, Design School Kolding
13.05: Lecture / PhD student Iryna Kucher
13.45: Examination / Professor Ingun Grimstad Klepp, Consumption Institute Norway, Oslo Metropolitan University
14.15: Break
14.30: Examination / Associate Professor & Senior Researcher Olga Gurova, Laurea University of Applied Sciences, Helsinki, Finland
15.00: Examination / Associate Professor Vibeke Riisberg, Design School Kolding
15.30: Comments from the audience
16.00: Closing remarks / Associate Professor Sune Klok Gudiksen, Design School Kolding
The defense will be followed by a reception.
Location: Design School Kolding, Dyrehavevej 116, 6000 Kolding
