Amend, mend, end

I picked up this card in Falmouth over the weekend from a rack outside a gift shop specialising in 'shabby chic' tat. It would be hard not to notice that there's been a revival of austerity-Britain iconography of late. The brisk on-line trade in retro 'make do and mend' postcards might have something to do with the V&A's exhibition a few years back, or to a surface sense of cultural symmetry between that era and our own (the usual explanation). But of course it's all for sale--you can buy your thrifty mantra, if you don't have time to live it. If you do have a spare Thursday morning and happen to live in London you can go along to a 'Mending Morning' at the Idler Academy and learn how to darn a sock (for a £5 donation). The Fixer's Collective in Brooklyn has moved on to Aiwa tape decks. What's going on, and how is our research implicated in this?