At the beginning of this year we became aware that Marks and Spencer, that bastion of the high street, was launching a repair service. “Excellent,” we thought.
Then this week we heard that another of the big chains was doing something similar by running free classes to show people how to repair their clothes. Wow! Now, that’s what we like to see. This store, however, is not one we would have expected to offer such a service. It’s Primark!
But, putting these two together, we can see what could be a very welcome change. How long have we been saying that we should all value our clothes more, learn to repair them so that they last longer? Of course, there have always been tailors and small businesses offering repairs and alterations, but when these big beasts get on board, more people are going to notice.
So we did a little digging and found that these two are far from being alone. Toast, Zara, Uniqlo, John Lewis, Jigsaw Fat Face – they’re all at it! Even one of our long-term favourites, Timpsons, offers a clothes repair and alteration service as well as the shoe heeling and key cutting for which it is famous.
Are these shops shouting loudly enough about this? Are they actively advocating repairs, or just ticking the sustainability box?
They all use different names. Primark wants us to “Love it for Longer”, and as well as the classes they have organised, they have booklets and videos online. Covering more than the basics, we would say. Anyone else new to “making a shank thread”?
Toast is championing the sashiko stitch for its mending service and, in February, launched a limited collection of visibly repaired Toast garments that had originally been either returned by customers or damaged in-store.
M&S call their service Plan A - “Another Life”
Uniqlo has launched Re.Uniqlo, offering repairs and embroidery as well as recycling well-worn clothes into materials for new clothing and resources.
Now, always aware of greenwashing, we note that some of these stores are outsourcing the repairs and some are offering them online only, with all the issue that that presents, but, in general, it can only be a good thing that companies are facing up to their responsibilities and offering end-of-life services for the products they created and encouraging us all to repair our clothes, rather than chuck them out. Of course, none of this negates the exploitative practices that still exist in the fashion industry, but we’ll try ty to see the positive side.
It would be nice if we got the point where stores offering a repair service was seen as completely normal.
PS. If you are interested in how brands are rated on their environment credentials, you might like this article.
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