Did Millennials kill the cobbler? 🥧
Before I jump into this week’s newsletter, a quick announcement -
Next Season (my new circular knitwear brand) is doing a pop-up at sustainable fashion boutique Rue Saint Paul in Cobble Hill on Saturday July 27th - come say hi if you’re in the area! Next week’s newsletter will be a deep dive into the making of this first Next Season collection 🧶
Last month I participated in The Untangling Circularity podcast, on the topic of ‘The Circular Journey of What We Wear: Repair, Refurb, Reman’. And one of my fellow interviewees, Kaitlyn Allen, founder of MendIt (an app connecting consumers with local clothing repair businesses) shared this astounding stat based on a nationwide survey her team conducted in 2020:
About 1/3 of Millennials and over 40% of Gen Z didn’t know that there are businesses that can repair their clothes.
There are a lot of factors driving this lack of awareness, some of which we touch on in the podcast (if you’re interested, you can listen to here on Apple Podcasts or Spotify).
Sorry for misleading you into thinking this newsletter was about pie…
After re-listening to the episode, I did a quick mental exercise to dig deeper into the ‘why’, and organize my thoughts on the topic:
Can these be repaired?
Even asking this question and exploring this path requires some basic idea of how clothing is made, and / or what sort of repair capabilities exist out there. And we’ve abstracted this knowledge away (outsourcing it to far away parts of the world where garment construction labor is artificially cheap), losing touch with the skills necessary to keep our clothing in circulation longer.
Also - lots of products are now designed in such a way that they’re not so easy or cost effective to repair. Sneakers, for example, are one of the most challenging fashion items to repair, remanufacture, or recycle, as they’re usually composed of multiple different materials and adhesives that are particularly hard to separate.
Where can I repair them?
Speaking personally, as a known ‘fashion’ person amongst my friends, I often get asked if I have any recommendations for tailor and cobblers. And I’ve tried a few in NYC over the 10+ years I’ve lived here - but the results have been inconsistent and pricey. It also takes a lot of time to run around the city delivering different pieces to different specialists, so honestly it’s been a while since I’ve bothered getting anything tailored or repaired.
As mentioned in the podcast, MendIt looks to solve the pain points of inconvenience and lack of price transparency, serving as a marketplace for local-to-you repair providers. Also want to shout out our fellow interviewee Stephen from Cobblers Direct, which offers (mail-in) repair services for shoes, boots, belts, and handbags, backed by over a century of repair expertise. Stephen shared some incredible repair stories on the podcast, and I plan to try out Cobblers Direct the next time I need to repair a purse or some shoes.
Is it even worth it…
It can feel hard to justify the costs of repair when the cost of buying new is often so ‘cheap’.
I think there’s a strong correlation here to our ‘valuation’ of our clothes; the items I’ve been motivated to spend time and money repairing are the ones that are the most valuable to me (value here meaning a combination of how expensive the item was and how much it means to me) - and this ‘value’ is always still weighed against the ‘cost’ of the repair (time & money).
TL;DR it’s so much easier to get new clothes than it is to spend time, energy, and money on repairing our existing items, which is why (if you’re like me) you might have a pile of damaged clothing languishing in your closet
I often think about the enormous amount of $$$ that been invested into systems for getting products to consumers as quickly and conveniently as possible. A LOT less has been invested in getting those items back, whether for return, repair, or recycling. Case in point is Amazon, who has essentially built their own private delivery fleet to ensure that products can get delivered right to our doorstep on a more-than-daily basis.
On a positive note, some exciting ‘Right to Repair’ legislation was recently passed in the EU, with an aim to make repair easier and more appealing for customers. Hopefully this movement can pick up steam in the US as well, beyond CA and NY (where initial bills have been passed, mostly focused on electronics and appliances).
And how does this all tie in with my own circular knitwear project? I think most of these challenges apply not just to ‘repair’ but to the circular economy in general - especially this core theme of the ‘value’ of clothes.
S/O to Cynthia and Laura, hosts of The Untangling Circularity Podcast and creators of the associated Circular Fashion Coalition - I’ve so enjoyed participating in these conversations and learning from others working in the circular fashion space!
Best,
Anne