Clothing brands move repair into the shop floor

The Associated Press reported on 10 August 2026 that clothing brands are turning repair into a customer-facing service. Levi Strauss runs a 90-minute hand-stitching class for high school students under its Wear Longer programme, covering buttons, hems, patches and tears; head of global design innovation Paul Dillinger frames it as giving buyers the skills to maintain what they own. Uniqlo offers repairs, sashiko mending, embroidery and restyling at 75 of its roughly 2,500 stores, while Primark has held more than 730 free Love It For Longer workshops in nine countries.

Zara's digital resale and alteration platform, launched in 2022, operates in 17 of nearly 100 markets, and H&M keeps a mending studio only at its Paris flagship, citing economics. The context is stark: the UN Environment Programme estimates the world produces the equivalent of one garbage truck of textile waste every second, and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation found that clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2015 while the average number of times a garment is worn fell by 36 per cent.