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