We started asking, in early summer, whether anyone would write back.
We sent a quiet email to about three thousand customers who had bought from us more than a year ago. The ask was small: if you have a MIKA & MILO piece that has been worn by more than one child, would you tell us about it? We thought we might hear from twenty or thirty families.
We have heard from over four hundred.
We are still working through the responses. Some are short — a sentence and a photograph. Some are long, looped, and held together by the kind of small details that only the person living the story would think to mention. They have been arriving for a few weeks now, and reading them has become the part of the morning I look forward to most.
What follows are four of those stories. With the families' permission, we are publishing them here, and we will be adding more across the rest of the year. They are not curated to flatter us. They are simply the ones that, when I read them, made me put the screen down for a moment.
The Hartleys, Edinburgh
"Bought for Eliza in 2022. She wore it every Saturday for two years. Then it went to Otto, who insists on wearing it as pyjamas. There is a small hole at the elbow now from a particularly dramatic afternoon involving the garden hose. Robin (six months) has it next, in theory."
The piece in question is a grey cable-knit cardigan from one of our earliest cashmere collections. It came back to us through MENDED in May, was repaired by Bao at the studio, and arrived back with the family last week. Robin will inherit it shortly.
The Marciano family, Brooklyn
"My mother bought the cardigan as a first-birthday gift for my eldest. It was the most expensive thing she'd ever sent. She wrote a note inside the box that said 'I hope she keeps this until she has children of her own.' That was nine years ago. Three children later — two of mine, one of my sister's — the cardigan still fits a four-year-old, still looks soft, still gets pulled out every autumn. My mother is unbearable about it, in the best possible way."
We love this story for a small operational reason. The cardigan in question has never been sent in for repair — it has held up entirely on its own. The family has done some careful washing along the way and otherwise let it be. Sometimes the best thing we can do is make a piece that doesn't need us.
The Lai family, London
"It came from a cousin in Hong Kong, who got it from a friend, who I think got it new. By the time it reached us it had been on three children. There was a piece of red embroidery thread inside the collar — some other family's marking, like the names sewn into school jumpers — that I left in. We sent it to MENDED last winter for a small repair on the cuff. It came back with a card that said 'we noticed the thread and left it.' That was the kind of detail that made me trust you for life."
The thread is still in the collar. It always will be. That decision was Bao's.
The Whitfields, Cape Town
"I bought the moss-stitch baby blanket when I was first pregnant, and assumed it would be a one-child item. Then we moved continents twice. The blanket has been on three flights, lived in two countries, and is currently being chewed by our second daughter, who is teething. I send a photo because the blanket — frankly — looks better than my coffee table. Whatever you put into this, it works."
The blanket has not been mended. It has been steamed once at our suggestion, after the first move. It is otherwise unbothered.
A note on what we are not.
I want to be honest about something. None of these stories are unusual. They are not the most sentimental, not the most photogenic, not the ones we picked because they make MIKA & MILO look best. They are simply four of more than four hundred we've received in the last few weeks, chosen because they cover slightly different territory: a piece that came back for repair, a piece that didn't need us, a piece bought secondhand, a piece that travelled.
The reason this matters is that the philosophy behind MENDED only works if the stories behind it are real. A repair programme that doesn't have hundreds of multi-child garments in active rotation is a marketing claim. A repair programme that does is a business model.
We are publishing this to show our working. The pieces are out there. They are being worn, washed, mended, passed on, found in cousin's drawers, sewn with other people's red threads. The job we have, going forward, is to keep doing the work that makes those second lives possible — and to keep listening when the families write back.
If you have a piece with a story, the form is here. We will read every one.
— Aiko
