Install App?
Hole and Corner
digital.holeandcorner.com
This is how the Install App dialog will look like once your App goes live.
Last week, my husband told me he had ordered some sashiko needles, along with some Japanese embroidery thread. The previous week, he had taught himself to sew a button on a shirt, complete with a twisted shank for added strength. Having barely picked up a needle and thread before in his life, he was soon deftly stitching a patch to the backside of a well-worn pair of Edwin jeans, neat rows of hand-stitched white thread visibly holding together a tear that had become slightly indecent on a middle-aged man. After that, he applied the same method he’d learnt from a YouTube tutorial, to the elbow of a shirt. And this morning, he pulled out another pair of jeans and gleefully announced they too were ‘going’ and would soon need to be repaired.
Mending, it seems, is a little bit addictive. There is something therapeutic, not just in the act of making lines of even stitches, but in the constructive process of fixing something and giving it a second life. Once you decide that you don’t need to replace something just because it’s a little worn around the edges, mending and repairing becomes a way of life, and a point of principle.
For Tom van Deijnen, also known as Tom of Holland, mending is something of a compulsion. His website and his popular Instagram account documents his adventures in visible mending, providing information about his workshops and his collaborations, like the one with Wolf & Gypsy to repair Varsity cardigans and jackets, and Welsh blankets for The New Craftsmen, as well as case studies of some of his personal projects.
‘I enjoy seeing used things,’ he told me when we spoke on the phone during his lunch break. ‘I like to see wear and tear.’ He has always repaired things since he was a teenager, which has culminated in his most time-intensive project, a six-year darn on a green machine-knit jumper that surfaced from a relative’s wardrobe, riddled with moth holes. He has worked on it over a six-year period, allowing him to track the progress of his stitching.
The whole notion of repairs as a form of therapy and enjoyment is, he says a very 21st-century idea. Previously, women in particular haven’t had time to ‘enjoy’ mending worn items. They’ve been too busy trying to juggle their lives, and synthetic fabrics and cheaper clothes meant a release from the drudgery of constant cleaning and darning. It is perhaps, something for those who have time on their hands, or who want to do something with their hands away from the demands of our otherwise digital lives.
‘I do find it enjoyable,’ he said. ‘It’s a moment of calm and peace in our otherwise hectic lives.’ Darned holes and visible patches become the sartorial equivalent of war wounds and ageing lines. They add character, a sense of life well lived as well as showing that you care. You care about your possessions and value them. You care about the precious resources that have gone into making the item in the first place – the gallons of water required to grow the cotton; the electricity needed to spin the thread and weave the cloth; the time taken to dye the cloth; the years of expertise needed to know how to cut, sew and finish it; the fuel used to ship it.
By stitching a patch on a pair of jeans, we acknowledge the human toil and the finite nature of the earth’s resources. Sewing a patch or darning a hole is one of the smallest things you can do to make the biggest difference. Every repair represents a piece of clothing saved, a new item unsold, a signal to the brands and retailers that it’s time to slow down
In 2016, the Swedish government cut taxes on repairs services, and allowed people to claim back income tax on repairs to white goods in a proactive effort to slow down consumption and stop the throwaway culture. On bikes and clothes, the government reduced VAT from 25% to 12% and on white goods consumers can claim back income tax. The plan was not to stop people buying new things, but to encourage them to buy better and less frequently. The repairs service market is labour intensive so provides local employment with work that is skilled, valued and satisfying.
‘We don’t anticipate that this will make people avoid buying things overall, but hopefully it will be easier for people to buy high-quality products because they know it’s affordable to have them fixed if something breaks,’ the deputy finance minister Per Bolund, told the World Economic Forum. Bolund is a member of the Green party and trained as a biologist. He’s precisely the sort of politician that needs to be cloned by the dozen right now. As he said, ‘it’s a lessened incentive to buy as cheap as possible and then scrap something.’
No wonder the Swedish denim brand Nudie Jeans is putting the culture of repair at the centre of their business. The head of their repairs workshop in Gothenburg is Michael Lundin, who is also responsible for the brand’s Re-use line of worn out jeans that have been brought back to the shops and repaired for resale. Sometimes the jeans might be like new, and hardly worn. Other times, they will have been worn for 20 years until they are almost threadbare. While Nudie offers free repairs instore, Lundin goes the extra mile with his creative denim repairs that have included an intricately embroidered rendition of the Great Wave of Kanagawa, which took him 10 hours to complete. People, he says are ‘really appreciative. It’s so nice to see old jeans have a new life again and see someone starting a new journey in them.’
Other brands that provide repairs and reconditioning as part of their service are often those that have traditional values of quality and longevity at their core – Barbour for example, which prides itself on its re-waxing service at its Newcastle factory to ensure that its jackets remain in service for as long as they are needed; and Belstaff , which recommends re-waxing as a matter of personal choice depending on how worn you like you jacket to look. They pride themselves on keeping jackets in use from as long ago as the 1950s – family heirlooms passed through generations.
A new generation of forward-thinking brands are ensuring that the culture of repair is part of their DNA. Take the craft footwear company FEIT, which makes shoes in limited numbers and offers free care and repairs within their warranty period. They call it ‘a revolt on the mentality of mass consumption’. For Patagonia, repairs are central to the whole philosophy of the brand. For them, repair is a radical act. In his brilliant book (some might call it a bible), Let My People Go Surfing, Patagonia’s founder, Yvon Chouinard writes: ‘The single best thing we can do for the planet is to keep our stuff in use longer.’ He says we have become a society of product consumers, not owners. ‘Owners are empowered to take responsibility for their purchases – from proper cleaning to repairing, reusing and sharing. Consumers take, make, dispose and repeat – a pattern that is driving us toward ecological bankruptcy.’
Curious, I organised a Zoom chat with iFixit’s San Luis Obispo HQ, and had a fascinating chat with their head of communications, the delightfully named, and incredibly insightful Kay-Kay Clapp. iFixit is on a mission to create guides to repair everything from vacuum cleaners to cars to smart phones. The internet is of course, the perfect vehicle for tutorials – like the one my husband used to learn to sew on a button – and it is quietly enabling a new generation of fixer-uppers. The hardware we use to view those videos however, is another story – and part of the problem. The Apple Genius Bar is cleverly named to make people think they have to be a genius to know how to fix their techy stuff . Clapp tells me that my iPhone is designed to keep me out and I will need a proprietary screwdriver to get inside it, only to find once in that the screws are all regular Philips ones. Their most common repair is for replacing batteries – no product should die when its battery does.
All 100-odd employees at iFixit have to build their own chair and desk when they arrive on their first day and if anything breaks it is used as a teaching tool to create a repair guide. The company has repairability guides for technology so you can check if your laptop can be repaired before you buy it. (The Apple laptop I am working on is part of the upgrade culture and cannot be repaired). ‘We have 50,000 guides,’ says Clapp, ‘but we cannot keep pace with the number of devices coming out.’ iFixit also has an office in Germany and Europe is, she says, 10 years ahead of the US on issues around sustainability, particularly with France becoming the first country to ban planned obsolescence.
The Repair Café movement in Europe – rapidly spreading in the UK thanks in part to the TV show The Repair Shop, which has become compulsive viewing – is also elevating the culture and craft of repair far faster than in America. Repaircafe.org partners with iFixit and off ers support and resources to open your own Repair Café where anyone can go to get help to fix their stuff . ‘The trouble is, lots of people have forgotten that they can repair things themselves or they no longer know how. Knowing how to make repairs is a skill quickly lost,’ says the website. Many of the experts who understand how things work and how they can be taken apart and put back together again are the older generations who grew up in post-war austerity, having no option but to fix things themselves when they are broken. So Repair Cafés off er a perfect opportunity to fix some of the broken links in society too, between generations and those who sometimes feel alienated or left behind by the digital world.
So call me idealistic (and I know I am) but it seems the act of repairing our stuff really can make a lasting radical change to the way we value our things, but also the way we value and connect with, each other. So if you’ve never sewn on a button or mended a moth hole, there’s every reason why you should find yourself a cosy corner and start today. All you need is a needle and thread. What could be simpler?
–
Ifixit.com
repaircafe.org
tomofholland.com
wornwear.patagonia.com
barbour.com
belstaff.co.uk
feitdirect.com
nudiejeans.com/selection/re-use
japancrafts.co.uk
(for sashiko needles and thread)