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I’ve recently become obsessed with the idea that our emptying high streets could potentially blossom into a multitude of repair shops. It’s probably got something to do with my rewatching hours and hours of the BBC’s unlikely hit The Repair Shop, an experience that is like watching paint dry and yet manages to deliver at least one heart-rending story every episode. So I daydream of a world of high streets filled with thriving local cobblers, launderettes, tailors and greengrocers; the world before Greggs, Tesco, Starbucks and Boots took over. Repair shops that I could pop into to have my broken kettle fixed or have the five pairs of unworn jeans stuffed at the back of my wardrobe made into a patchwork denim jacket by a seamstress with an eye. The charity shop is a good alternative, but what if I want to mend an old sweater rather than give it away but I don’t know how to darn? The first step to that potential reality, I was pleased to learn, is a new venture called RETURE. I spoke to one of its co-founders about the platform they are building online to connect garment owners with makers to rework old clothes into something new.
Selfridges launched its Project Earth initiative in August, with rental of dresses and bags on its flagship’s third floor, repair services for items not even purchased in store, as well as services like refillable fragrance top-ups in the beauty halls. The store on Oxford Street has met the company’s target for zero waste to landfill since July 2014 and Selfridges is committing to “ensure that the most environmentally impactful materials used across our business come from certified, sustainable sources by 2025” and promising to “engage with all our suppliers – from products to property – to shape an approach that reduces our dependency on virgin resources and respects nature”. I applaud it shaking things up as a department store, a place meant to be selling us ever more things as often as possible.
How will we change the way we shop? We’ve had a year of asking ourselves, what do we really need? What do we really want? And so with these questions in mind, how do we look at the Resort collections that are now coming into stores, so quickly after autumn collections landed in September? These are the collections finished off during a global lockdown at home, and typically have ended up being true distillations of brands’ DNA. Whether going deep into craft like Maria Grazia Chiuri at Dior and her celebration of Italian handiwork or Alessandro Michele’s being inspired by his own design team who worked on and modelled the clothes for quintessential Gucci-ness, creativity was let loose within the constraints of smaller production and the reality of smaller social bubbles. Resort 2021 collections are like markers of our time, reflecting a desire for comfort, less need to go out in public this end of year, and the fact that we have realised that we just don’t need as much choice as we once thought.
As I type this, we are entering a second lockdown and what, how and when we will again invest in things that make us happy, that help us reflect what we want to do in this mad, crazy world, and which provide a sense of freedom of expression and spirit that only the things we dress up in the morning can… well, your guess is as good as mine. Caroline Issa