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I don’t know about the rest of you, but ever since I got involved with XTANT I’ve been getting more and more fashion related content on YouTube and such. On one of those days I happened to put on a video of a Japanese man whose entire store was dedicated to shoe repair. Now this isn’t revelatory or anything, you’re not meant to be wowed, but the amount of care that this man placed into restoring heels, fixing leather and his encyclopaedic knowledge about shoes was almost awe inspiring. One of the things mentioned in the video was, with changing attitudes, fewer and fewer people sent for their wardrobe to be repaired. Now, I don’t have any concrete figures but i can only assume that the number is even lower here in Europe than it is in Japan. It makes sense to a certain degree, people have higher incomes nowadays and the price of fast fashion apparel is exploitatively low. In that environment, unless a piece has specific sentimental value, you might as well just buy another. Heh, I bolded the word environment in that sentence, where’s my Pulitzer? Joking, you get the issue with that notion, its effect has been trodden upon a million times over. But right there is the importance of repair, plain as day. If we are to change the volumetric amounts of consumption we partake in we also have to change habits. And, on top of having greater resources on how to take care of clothing best, think an instructional pamphlet for your wardrobe, it’s important that we consider taking back up the practice of repair.
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