My shoes have holes in them. You can see the colors of my socks peeking through near the tips. I’m learning not to mind this, not to immediately look for a replacement. Ever since learning about the devastating nature of the fashion industry, ravaging human and more-than-human lives alike, I’ve been trying to look for other ways to go about the daily ritual of dressing. While there are always new and beautiful garments at only an arm’s length away, maybe we should learn to use and care for what is already here. It is often said that there are currently enough garments on this planet to dress the next six generations. I think we should slow down, and re-evaluate.

I’ve been repairing the holes in my socks with bright red thread. I think there is beauty in keeping these objects alive, usable, but there is also beauty in leaving a visible and even personal mark. I once bought this red thread to create a Halloween costume and my repairs lay somewhere between the care of mending and the violence of my shoddy blood-red stitches. While repair is vital to extend lifetimes of garments, especially when these are made to only last ten wash cycles (Joy et al. 2012), perhaps the goal here should not be to restore items to an unblemished, ‘as-good-as-new’ state. Sampson (2025) points out how a lack of skill, time and desire might create ambivalent and inconsistent relationships with repair. I certainly know I’m lacking the competences needed to create beautiful patches of ‘visible mending’ or to truly obfuscate traces of wear. But does that matter?

The jeans I wear every day are fraying at their edges. I’ve become quite enthralled at this process, the unbecoming of threads and the layering of colors due to patina. As the industrial fashion system tears at the seams of our planetary boundaries, I think it is vital to learn to embrace the imperfections which result from wearing and repairing our clothes. Entropy and the meeting of human and more-than-human bodies make for tears, stains, abrasions and holes (Sampson 2025). These are the unavoidable consequences of living our dressed lives, and perhaps we can learn to see these traces of wear as valuable and mesmerising rather than something to be hidden or thrown away. Rutten and Devos (2023) speak of an ‘imperfect turn’ in which imperfection becomes re-valued and deviations from the perfect are fascinating or even advantageous. I think there would be power in an embrace of imperfection, a rejection of purity. Maybe a stubborn stain does not warrant disposing of a garment: I would rather live with the stain than let the cloth be burned or thrown in a landfill.

I still point out the stain on my mother’s blouse before we go to her birthday dinner. This embracing of imperfection and damage does not sit easily with the values deeply embedded in our daily experiences of fashion, closely associated with the fashion industry’s obsession with newness and unblemished surfaces (Sampson 2025). This inclination is hard to shake, especially when one takes into account the situated social nature of fashion: I won’t wear my shoes with holes when I need to look ‘appropriately’ dressed. As a sociologist, I’m keen to point out how inequalities structure the way we experience dress and fashion. The call for an imperfect turn should take into account that some have more to lose than others in disregarding these cultural repertoires of perfection. Norms related to looking perfect and keeping up with the newest fashion are classed, racialised and gendered (McRobbie 2015; Karademir 2026; Rafferty 2011). However, a politics of imperfection (Shotwell 2016) and learning to love what is not beautiful goes beyond dress and has a potential for resistance. It is in the face of a global rise of hateful, racist and fascist politics that insist on ‘purity,’ that these regimes of perfection should be overthrown in order to forefront and celebrate life once more, in all of its imperfect nature.

Note: These reflections are inspired by the course ‘Fashion Sociology’ and the writing of my thesis on second-hand shopping, both under the supervision of Dr. Aurélie Van de Peer.

This piece was originally published in Issue 1 of the print edition of Ordinary Matters magazine. 

References:

Joy, A., Sherry, J. F., Venkatesh, A., Wang, J., & Chan, R. (2012). Fast Fashion, Sustainability, and the Ethical Appeal of Luxury Brands. Fashion Theory, 16(3), 273–296.

Karademir, I. (2026). Clothing, Beauty, and Inequality. In G. Kuipers, & O. Sarpila (Eds.), Handbook of Beauty and Inequality (pp. 253–265). Springer, Cham. 

McRobbie, A. (2015). Notes on the Perfect: Competitive Femininity in Neoliberal Times. Australian Feminist Studies, 30(83), 3–20.

Rafferty, K. (2011). Class-based emotions and the allure of fashion consumption. Journal of Consumer Culture, 11(2), 239–260.

Rutten, E. & de Vos, R., (2023). Trash, Dirt, Glitch: The Imperfect Turn. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 26(1), 3–13.

Sampson, E. (2025). On Not Fixing Things: Ambivalence and Reparation in the Fashion Industry. Fashion Theory, 29(7), 1033–1053.

Shotwell, A. (2016). Against purity: Living ethically in compromised times. University of Minnesota Press.