Will repairs be the next big thing in fashion

[Music]

i have been studying fashion

and its role on our society since i was

a child

fashion is one of the largest and the

most powerful industries in the world

but it is also an industry full of

contradictions

fashion has always played an important

role in my life

and i had a chance and a privilege

to experience it in very very diverse

and very different ways

first of all as a little girl growing up

in the post-soviet union lithuania

a small country close to the baltic sea

back then anything fashionable was even

hard to get

i grew up wearing sweaters knitted by my

mother

and dresses made by a local seamstress

later on i could experience the industry

working as a fashion model

i was traveling the world and working

with a lot of great and creative people

which i truly loved

on as a social activist the fashion

revolution social movement

sustainable fashion entrepreneur and

also

us innovation researcher

while pursuing my phd in open and

collaborative innovation

i was comparing different industries

and i soon came to realize that fashion

industry

was neither open nor collaborative

i also realized that there was very

little innovation

happening at the beginning of a supply

chain

most of innovation was happening at the

end of a supply chain

aimed at us consumers making us

buy more and more goods and selling us

goods

faster and cheaper think about

e-commerce

same-day delivery data analytics

all aimed at selling more and more stuff

and despite enormous technological

advancement of today

manually operated sewing machine is

still the primary means by which

clothing are being made

the way we produce clothing has barely

changed

over the last 100 years

the only thing what changed is the

geographical location

of production sites they moved from

european and american cities

to india china and recently

even to the african countries

so there is a saying in the

entrepreneurship context

money will follow good ideas

well indeed in the fashion industry

ideas were following money

due to human labor being so cheap and so

worthless

industry had no incentives to innovate

while the cost of living has been

constantly going up

just think about housing food or maybe

even education

the cost of fashion was always going

down

industry got further distorted by

massive discounting practices

where we as consumers even feel silly

if we buy something which is priced full

price

think about it 75 of

all garment purchases are being done

on a discount price

so as consumers we stopped valing the

clothes we own

we got addicted to impulse behavior

and we saw fashion as disposable good

junk food junk fashion

while feeding our eagles we also closed

an eye on the fact

that fashion industry is one of the most

resource intense industries

and one of the most polluting industries

in this world

if you think about that fashion industry

produces

more wastewater and co2 emissions

than the flight and maritime industry

it’s quite incredible

maybe not anymore in these times but

nevertheless

fashion industry is also the number one

contributor of

microplastics in our oceans

so if we think that fashion goods go

cheap

indeed we are all paying a price for it

industry is also very wasteful one

since 2000 the production of closing has

more than doubled and most of these

clothing

end up in landfills only about 20

of clothing are being collected for

recycling

and about one percent of these collected

clothes

are being turned into fresh textiles

so if you think what we threw away in

our life

most of the things are existing

somewhere on this planet

if you think about that the pair of

sneakers might take even up to 1 000

years to decay

we need to realize that the industry

was built on a very linear business

model

so when we think about major innovations

in fashion

be it sewing machine invention of

synthetic and more durable materials

or recently also e-commerce they all

cause the problems that our society and

our planet is facing today

we also need to admit that there has

been barely any innovation in the

fashion

industry since the last 20 years

and then came kovit

together with with travel and

hospitality industry

fashion industry was hit particularly

hard

and for better or for worse

the last few months were like a major

detox for the fashion industry

the pandemic taught us a number of

reasons

first of all there is no next season

clothes are just close and good designs

don’t have an expiration date

in the times when we all wanted

solidarity and closeness

fashion industry was no longer part of a

zeitgeist

but nevertheless we also realize that we

need creative industries that we need

creativity

to keep our spirit high in the difficult

times

fashion is the form of art and it’s

the closest and the most intimate way we

can engage with art and culture

however the way we enjoy fashion it’s

very different

while music and arts are aimed at

connecting people

fashion was aimed at differentiating

people one from another

we also realized that our communities

became

not resilient due to globalization of

supply chains of fashion production

we were not even able to produce face

masks in our own countries

so over the last three four years i have

intensively been thinking

what is going to be the next big thing

in fashion

and what is the future in the fashion

industry

that is actually worth building

i think we need to dream harder we need

to acknowledge

that the next organic cotton t-shirt is

not going to change the industry

and then just simply by shifting our

shopping

addiction to sustainable brands we will

not achieve a long lasting change

we need an invention of a value set in

the industry

to a certain extent we need to unlearn

fashion as we know it and decode the

competitive achievement focus

on which it was built and i have an idea

how to achieve it

because fashion should be local and it

should be more social

i have an idea and it means that we

should start repairing

and repairing our clothes more

the good thing is that we can start

already today

and it can even be fun

well repairs it is a lateral antidote to

consumerism

it is a revolutionary act because we are

hacking

the linear business model on which the

fashion industry was built on

repairs are also deeply human

even nature has naturally built repair

mechanisms

i grew up in an ex-soviet union

and i had a chance to learn how to sue

and knit at the home economic courses

back then i thought it was a little bit

sexist because only girls had to take

the course

nowadays i’m very happy that i learned

this skill

the skill which my daughter will most

probably not learn at school

most of the schools do not teach home

economics anymore

and as society we lost interest

and last to repair and we also lost the

skill to repair

but repairs are also good for creativity

because

repaired things are unique and while

consuming can be fun

and shopping can be fun creating

something with your own hands can be

even more rewarding

there are studies that show that

shopping joy

will wear out most properly within a day

but we all have to acknowledge once we

create something with our own hands

the joy may last for years

even research suggests that repairs and

crafts

are good for our mental well-being and

it can help

fight stress and anxiety

mending invites us to a new state of

mind

which goes way beyond clothes

however culturally repairs has seen

different connotations throughout

history

during the war times due to really

scarcity of resources

repairs were sometimes seen as an act of

patriotism

and we can even see similar behavior

today

if we think about people collecting

materials

sewing masks and giving them to the

community members

it is a sign of patriotism is a sign of

being united and being together

after the war however repairs were a

sign of poverty

and the feminists of the 70s even saw it

as an

unpaid domestic labor and repairing

became completely not more fashionable

then came the punks and the hippies and

we all

ended up spending big money on used

looking jeans

or washed our t-shirts

repairs connect people and things

every garment has a story a story of its

origin

but we consumers also make stories while

wearing clothing

the value of the garment isn’t

determined

by the time you buy it we add value to

the clothing

by loving them by living in them

and by taking care of them so stitches

or tears are like scars on our body

they remind us of the events they make

the clothes

ours and finally

we also have to acknowledge that

sometimes some repairs are maybe too

difficult to do it by your own

there’s a large number of local

seamstresses and shoemakers just waiting

for you to stop by

however a study by greenpeace shows that

about half of the germans

have never had anything repaired

think about it so while we are

importing most of the fashion goods from

overseas

let’s at least repair it locally this

creates jobs

and it supports local service economy

just like local shops or restaurants

local craftsmen are the spirit of our

cities

and we need them to exist we don’t want

them to disappear

so the trousers i’m wearing today is the

perfect manifestation of

everything what i have been telling they

are the real boyfriend jeans

they are the genes of my husband he

bought them

about 15 years ago and he really loved

them he just couldn’t pair

these jeans they have been repaired by a

local seamstress

at least five times or maybe more a

lovely greek lady

called eleni this jeans

has a lot of memories for my husband and

myself

and i think after today they will be

loaded with further memories

i guess i will be never able to throw

these trousers away

so to conclude i want to say that i’m

not

anti-fashion i love the industry

it’s energy and it’s power but i’m

also convinced that good tastes

shouldn’t come at the cost of

environment

or other human beings i deeply believe

that

fashion and crafts can be a source for

good

and a binding element of a community

repairing clothes offers a significant

opportunity

to repair our lives maybe our mental

well-being

our relationship to other humans and the

planet

and maybe even help the local economy

this planet doesn’t need more clothes

it needs more happy people and more

resilient communities

so while i’m not sure if repairs

are going to be the next big thing in

fashion

i’m very sure it is the next right thing

thank you

[Music]

you