Visible Mending : Remaking Ourselves

Bold, beautiful, unhidden: Visible Mending reclaims repair as an act of care, creativity, and quiet resistance.

In Visible Mending, essayist, poet, and Emerita Professor Kathryn DeZur turns her keen eye for the intimate and overlooked toward the humble act of repair. Beginning with a small pile of worn, beloved garments, DeZur unspools a layered meditation on mending—not to erase damage, but to honor it.

Blending memoir, textile history, and cultural critique, this book-length braided essay explores the aesthetics and ethics of visible mending within contemporary Western culture. DeZur considers how acts of repair intersect with sustainability, status, fast fashion, and the politics of bodies—touching on fatphobia, ageism, and the pressures of self-presentation. Throughout, she asks what it might mean to live—and dress—in ways that acknowledge wear, time, and transformation.

At once personal and expansive, Visible Mending invites readers to reconsider the stories embedded in the things we keep, the marks we conceal, and the ways we might instead choose to make them seen.