Why do we buy into the vintage ‘make do and mend’ nostalgia fest so readily with no sense of thrift at all?
We consume material goods and information like there’s no tomorrow, and we love a new fashion or fad to follow. We navigate our way through conflicting messages on a daily basis telling us we must buy more shit, yet we must “keep calm and carry on” in a pursuit for simpler pleasures and “make do and mend”. In fact, there is such a huge subscription to the rise of “make do and mend” since the recession we can buy books on it, fill our wardrobes with moth-eaten vintage clothes to look the part, and go on a plethora of crafty courses so that we can knock up some curtains (or perhaps make an outfit from our curtains to wear whilst yodelling in the mountains), knit some sanitary towels or upcycle a rusty nail in our spare time. Hell, we can even watch Kirstie Allsopp tell us how to make it and mend it. We have totally bought into this faux vintage shabby chic “make do and mend” lifestyle.
The illogical fact that we buy into it with such abandon of any sense of thrift, is the irony of course. The original “make do and mend” era was introduced by wartime scarcity of resources and a necessity for frugality going right through into the 1950s. The Ministry of Information provided the British public with tips on darning and mending clothes to make them last longer, to getting the maximum juice out of a lemon. The “make do and mend” of yesterday is a far cry from the consumerist nostalgia fest we seem to be obsessed with today.
The high street is littered with ubiquitous gift shops selling the likes of Cath Kidston and Gisela Graham, fabric hearts to hang around your house, painted wooden letters to hang on the wall and spell out to us what room we are in, and other pointless ornamental bric-a-brac. It’s expensive to fill our home with lots of vintage style reproduction crap. And then there’s the distressed furniture. If I was a cheap old pine chest of drawers, riddled with woodworm, with some Annie Sloan chalk paint slapped on with a few bits then rubbed off being sold for well over the odds, I would be distressed too. Distressed by the numpties with more money than sense that want to buy me!
We can go to flea markets and vintage fairs and buy every bit of cheap old tat you can imagine to clutter our homes with (and believe me, I’ve been there and done it). Vintage cardigans with moth holes in, rusty old enamel cooking tins, Polaroid cameras that haven’t worked since 1978, vintage board games in yellowed decaying boxes with half the pieces missing, nylon vintage dresses with tiny waists, vintage gloves for tiny hands and vintage shoes for tiny feet. Those vintage people were a lot smaller than us you know. I reckon they were like hobbits. Maybe they’re in Middle Earth laughing their arses off at us buying all their tiny junk so that we can fill up our modern homes with it and feel so virtuous as we’re making do and mending.
There is a huge business that has emerged out of this trend for vintage and retro chic. There are so many vintage shops and emporiums with an abundance of tat where the prices are so prohibitively expensive, only the wealthy middle-classes can afford it anyway. If you can afford to spend £800 on a chipped old metal filing cabinet you really are paying a huge premium just because it’s “vintage” and totally unique (apart from all the other people sourcing and filling their homes these same on-trend vintage finds). And of course you are being so “eco-friendly” by reducing the manufacturing impact on the environment caused from buying something new… Well done, it’s certainly something to tell the neighbours with a smug self-satisfied smile as you load the Joules-clad children into the 4 x 4.
What I would like to do is raise my middle finger to the crafty cheerleaders of vintage vogue and say Keep Calm and Upcycle This: It’s certainly not cheap, right-on or very individual to buy into this “make do and mend” vintage obsession, yet we’re lapping it up, and let’s be honest, it’s all a little boring isn’t it?
Note: A brief search for "make do and mend" on Google images showed me you can buy a "Make Do and Mend" poster, a "Make Do and Mend" t-shirt, a "Make Do and Mend" notebook, a "Make Do and Mend" pencil case, a "Make Do and Mend mug"… and then I got bored. Thanks Google, point made.
Dawn of the Dame
You can read more from Dawn of the Dame on her blog and follow her on twitter @dawnofthedame
