Drop Crotch Pants

MENDS: Drop-crotch pants, 2019-present

Summer 2019, and I loved Instagram. Ads had been a thing for a while–but not long enough to sour my relationship with the platform. And they had interesting stuff! I bought a device for turning milk jugs into plastic string, and received a stick of wood with a brass bit… it was bunk. But no matter! An ad for “harem pants” and “drop-crotch pants” came around, and I went for it. They were so cheap, I bought three–black, gray and khaki. 

I loved them immediately–loose fit, natural fiber (cotton), thin (because it was made of the cheapest possible muslin). Perfect for summer. They became my daily drivers, and because I was developing a mural practice, I wore them to paint. And almost immediately, I ripped the bottom hem of the black pair coming down from a mini-scaffold. Gah!

I patched it and enjoyed the process… and decided, on the basis of the above, that I’d see how long I could keep them functional. 

The patches here come from broken garments I’d once purchased new; donations; and from my Mendwear thrift-trash project. I began with Sashiko-inspired patches using knits, and later got excited about making rectilinear patches with hemmed edges. So many thoughts and feelings in these repairs. 

Eventually, after patching, and then patching the textile failures around the patches, and then patching THOSE edges… I decided they were dead. I took off the waistband, and put them away. Then I got them out again this fall, and resumed the project. The peasants who created Boro patched the patches, and patched the patches of patches, for generations. 

The questions still stand: 

How long can I keep a garment alive and functional? 

Does it matter that the garment was made poorly, from poor materials, by unknown craftsmen being exploited by unknown global capital enterprises? 

When is a garment too broken to fix?