Repairs are surprisingly easy, better for the environment, and inevitably cheaper than a replacement. YouTube has a tutorial for almost everything and if you can’t do it yourself, a good quality local alterations shop should do the trick.
Even at the more luxury end of the fashion world, an emphasis on seasonal collections encourages us to throw something away when it shows the first signs of damage to be replaced by the shiny new thing. We need to buy better clothes that are worth salvaging when they reach that point.
Free repairs at Flax London
That’s why we introduced a free repairs service for all Flax London clothing in the UK. Our clothes are made to last, but they’re not invincible. If we can give people another few years’ wear out of something with a good quality repair, then fantastic. We encourage our customers to wear their repairs with pride.
The two shirts pictured below are both from our first ever batch of Signature Shirts. After being worn religiously for 3 years, they found themselves in need of some TLC. One had a leopard crawling-induced sleeve tear and the other had two abrasion patches after years of enthusiastic sleeve rolling.
Our repairs and alterations are done by Daksha at Seven Star Dry Cleaners in Camberwell. Daksha and her son Jay run a tight ship and it's great to use a great local business. Daksha uses offcuts of the original linen to patch repair any holes or tears that can't be darned. Normally colour matched, but occasionally mismatched intentionally as per the Grey Shirt owner's request.
Let us know if you ever need something patched up and/or repaired by sending an email to flax@flaxlondon.com. And if you really do need something new, make it something that’ll get old with grace and be worth repairing.
