Repair should be more expensive, not cheaper!

August 5, 2024

On World Overshoot Day (and Dia Pachamama), August 1, 2024, we launched a repair service where I repair clothes, as art, for NOK 1000 per hour.

Most initiatives to help people live more sustainably focus on cutting costs. Cutting costs for businesses, cutting costs for customers, cutting, cutting, cutting.

Cost-cutting is largely why we are in the situation we are in now, with the enormous overconsumption we have. It's a race to the bottom where we constantly focus on short-term profitability instead of true value.

Extreme problems require radical solutions, and I believe in increasing, not decreasing, the cost of sustainability.

Clothes are too cheap

Repair is not too expensive, and could even be more expensive. It is the exploitation and misuse of resources and labor that makes repair seem prohibitively expensive. If people, nature, and animals throughout the production chain were treated well, repairing would be a given because clothes would cost much more.

#MendingIsTheNewCouture

In the fashion industry, we have couture, and we have fast fashion, and we have hobby sewers and we have tailors. We can and should have similar variation in repair services. There’s no reason why repair cannot be combined with decoration so that repairs can become a mark of honor instead of a blemish. By making repairs visible and decorative, we create a willingness to pay for repaired clothes.

It should pay to work with sustainability

We focus heavily on making it profitable for consumers to live sustainably. It is even more effective if we can create jobs that pay well and contribute to reduced consumption. If those who work with what we truly need in society—care, maintenance, etc.—are always the lowest paid, not enough people will do it. And even if many do, those in these jobs won't have the means, time, or energy to live sustainably. We don't live sustainably because it demands more from us! We need to create work that gives us money and surplus to live in a more balanced way. We must stop being in a race to the bottom. We must demand more. The path to a more just world, a more environmentally friendly world, a more caring world, is created when we collectively recognize our own value and DEMAND MORE, instead of doing more.

As long as we push to make sustainability cheap for the consumer, it's a bit like sawing off the branch we're sitting on,

It is precisely us "consumers" who are also the workers striving to care for people, animals, and the planet, and we are burning the candle at both ends. We need to earn more so we can afford each other's services. This can be a redistribution of economic resources, not through taxes, but by offering something expensive enough to redistribute through trade. Many people have enough financial resources to pay for "luxury" sustainability and have the heart to want to do so. We must create products and services for them and charge properly so we can actually grow and scale and create good jobs that improve the environment more than they harm it.

The economy has become an idol

The economy should work for us; we should not work for the economy. Instead, we let it dictate our choices and blindly trust that a focus on short-term profit will yield the best long-term results for our collective quality of life. The economy is not an omniscient and loving god; it is time we tame it and use it as a tool to improve the lives of most people, instead of using the lives of most people to cultivate and worship it. We have let profit rule for too long, and the earth and people are being depleted. It is up to each of us to stop believing the propaganda that overconsumption will make us happy. We must put our foot down and we must demand recognition and compensation for the value of what is truly invaluable.

Unpaid labor is our most valuable work

Capitalism has always relied on unpaid labor, whether it be slaves, irresponsible use of natural resources, animals, and the invisible women working at home ("trad wives"). When someone is exploited, it results in an imbalance where an insane number of people suffer to create things for consumption we don't actually need, which doesn't increase our quality of life. We have "streamlined" and constantly create new solutions to "save time." The time we save is spent on more work for someone else's gain, or consumption (also for someone else's gain). "Streamlining" leads to more trash, more waste, and more use of limited natural resources.

Caring for nature, caring for ourselves, and caring for each other is valuable, and it's not something we can "automate" away. It requires the most valuable and limited thing we have: TIME.

When everyone's work is valued, respected, and properly compensated, we will be able to achieve a balance where our needs for food, clothing, shelter, and so on are met, while also having time and energy for creativity, play, rest, friendship, and more. This, in turn, will lead to less need or desire for overconsumption because we will have met the needs we try to alleviate with overconsumption.

It's still cheap to repair yourself, if you have the time.

Those who find it too expensive to pay for repairs can learn to repair themselves. My book, Visible Repair, contains tons of tips, advice, guidance, and instructions so you can repair clothes almost for free, with almost just a needle and thread. By showing how to also make it visible, neat, and creative, those who repair themselves can gain more benefits than just repaired clothes. Clothes repair can simply be a creative hobby. Repairing yourself is a great way to save money. You save money on both clothes and hobby supplies while reducing consumption and getting a unique wardrobe and expressing yourself more through the garments you wear.

FREE knowledge sharing

I have already shared some free guidance on the website. The online store was started to have an income source beyond sharing knowledge. When the online store generates a profit, we will have the capacity to share more and more free information and knowledge so that those who cannot pay for repair services will get more and more help to take care of what they have themselves.

Visible repair is becoming a whole new industry

We can have a society full of art restorers as well as more ordinary tailoring shops. We can sew by hand, with a sewing machine, and we can use machine embroidery. When clothes are like a blank canvas that can change and become more decorated and valuable over time, there are no limits to how much one can come up with to extend the life of the garment. We are turning the fashion industry's business model on its head.

We make the oldest, most worn, and most repaired clothes the most valuable.

Imagine how much less clothing we would consume then! Someone has to lead the way, and someone has to dare to charge well. This is a solution that benefits everyone who wants more sustainability, regardless of their financial situation. Those with ample means can buy the service, while those with little can fix things themselves, without shame, and can eventually get properly paid to repair visibly and creatively for others too.

I want to lead the way and continually raise the bar for what creative, visible, and artistic repair is worth.

Those who purchase an art repair from me contribute to a paradigm shift that can truly change the world.

Little Norway CAN change the world

Norway is a small country, but with significant international influence. Imagine Norway's elite starting to wear art repairs. Imagine this spreading globally, starting in little Norway. Imagine being one of the first who dared to believe that little Norway can actually save the world, at least a little. Imagine that we can save the world with more luxury, not less, because we have redefined luxury to be about what is truly valuable instead of what destroys all true value.

Imagine that these types of solutions employ Norway after the oil era. Imagine us living with creativity and self-expression and unique, personalized clothes and repairs. Imagine brands developing clothes suitable for continuous repair. Imagine clothing brands developing their own repair collections, and we simply want to wear very few clothes so we can wear them often and wear them out faster because we collect repairs and want one from each season. Gotta catch 'em all.

We shape the world. We create our reality. I am creating this one. Will you create it with me?

We don't even need many people to believe in this to create it. If you buy a repair from me, we are already there, you and I, sharing that dream, that reality, through that transaction.

Time will tell how big that reality can become, but no matter how big it is, we have created it together on a small scale by both agreeing that this is the kind of world we want to live in, that this is the kind of world that is valuable to us. I can enjoy fixing the garment, and you can enjoy seeing the result. Together, we choose to believe in the future, hope for humanity, and love for all that we actually have. This is how we learn to see the abundance that truly exists. Art repair teaches us to live with gratitude and to see possibilities where others see shame.