Repair, not replace

We mend anything we have made, for as long as we are here to mend it. Here is what actually comes back.

Overwhelmingly, it is buttons. Roughly half of everything we see is a button that has worked loose, usually on a coat, usually the one at the waist that takes the most strain when someone sits down. It takes minutes to fix and it is the single most common reason a garment gets abandoned.

Second is lining at the underarm and the pocket bag. Both are friction points, both wear through long before the outer cloth does, and both are replaceable in an afternoon. A coat whose lining has gone is not a worn-out coat.

Third, and much rarer, is moth damage. Wool stored dirty over a summer is an invitation. Most of what we see could have been avoided by washing before storing rather than after.

What almost never comes back is a seam failure or a cloth failure. In six years we have re-cut a panel four times, twice for the same customer, both times after genuinely spectacular accidents.

The pattern is clear enough: garments are not usually thrown away because they are worn out. They are thrown away because something small went wrong and there was nowhere to take it.