I spent a year repairing things rather than replacing them, partly out of interest and partly to find out whether it was practical or merely virtuous.
It was mostly practical, with clear exceptions.
The repairs that were straightforward
Learnable in an evening from written instructions, requiring almost no equipment.
Buttons, obviously, and the technique that matters is the shank — leaving a small gap so the button sits properly rather than pulling the fabric.
Seams that have come apart, which is generally a thread failure rather than a fabric failure and which is a straightforward repair.
Hems, both taking up and letting down.
Small holes in knitwear, caught early, which take minutes and become considerably harder if left.
These four cover a large proportion of what actually goes wrong, and none requires a machine.
The repairs worth paying for
Where an alterations shop or a cobbler is the right answer.
Zip replacement, which is fiddly, requires the right zip, and is inexpensive to have done.
Anything structural in tailoring — a jacket lining, a shoulder — where an amateur repair is visible and a professional one is not.
Resoling shoes, which requires equipment and skill and is dramatically cheaper than replacing decent shoes.
And leather repairs generally, where the material is unforgiving of mistakes.
The cost of these is consistently a fraction of replacement, which is the argument, and the barrier is that most people do not know the shops exist.
What was not worth repairing
Being honest, since the answer is not always mend.
Garments where the fabric itself has degraded — thinned, pilled throughout, lost its structure. Repairing one hole in fabric that is failing everywhere buys weeks.
Very cheap garments where the repair cost exceeds the replacement cost, which is a real situation and is a consequence of how cheap some clothing has become.
Anything that never fitted, which I had been keeping in the hope of alteration and which mostly could not be altered enough.
And elastane-containing garments where the elastane has perished, which cannot be repaired and which is why stretch fabrics have a shorter life than the outer fibre suggests.
The visible mending question
A choice I had to make repeatedly.
Invisible repair aims to restore the garment to its original appearance and is harder.
Visible mending treats the repair as a feature, using contrasting thread or patches deliberately.
The second is easier, more durable in some cases because the repair can be larger and more robust, and produces a garment that looks repaired.
Whether that is acceptable depends entirely on the garment and the context, and I found myself doing invisible repairs on anything for work and visible ones on everything else.
What it actually cost
Time, principally.
The learning was perhaps four hours in total across the year, spread across the first few attempts.
Individual repairs after that took between ten minutes and an hour.
Materials were negligible — thread, needles, a few patches.
Professional repairs cost a modest amount each, and in every case substantially less than replacement.
The saving over the year was meaningful and it was not the main benefit.
The unexpected effect
Repairing things changed what I bought.
Once you have repaired a seam, you notice how seams are finished when buying. Once you have replaced a button, you notice whether buttons are properly attached.
I became considerably more attentive to construction, and correspondingly less willing to buy things that were obviously going to fail.
Which is a larger effect than the repairs themselves, and it is the argument I would make to somebody considering it.
What I would suggest starting with
A needle, thread in a few colours, and scissors, which is the entire kit for most of it.
Learn to sew a button properly, which takes fifteen minutes and is immediately useful.
Find a local alterations shop and a cobbler, which is the highest-value step and which most people have never done.
And repair one thing you would otherwise have thrown away, on the basis that the downside is losing something you had already written off.
Right to repair, applied to clothing
A development worth watching.
Some jurisdictions have introduced schemes subsidising repair of clothing and shoes, on the reasoning that the barrier is cost relative to cheap replacement.
Early reporting suggests meaningful uptake where the schemes exist, which supports the view that people will repair when it is economically sensible.
Some brands have also introduced repair services for their own products, which is straightforwardly good where it is genuine and is occasionally a marketing exercise with a limited scope.
Worth asking about at purchase, since a brand that repairs its own goods is making a statement about how long it expects them to last.
Moths
Worth a paragraph because they cause a substantial share of the damage that ends garments.
The damage is done by larvae feeding on protein fibres, so wool, cashmere and silk are affected and synthetics generally are not.
They prefer undisturbed dark places and are attracted to soiled fabric, which is why storing knitwear unwashed over summer is the single most common mistake.
Washing before storage, sealed containers, and periodic disturbance address most of it. Cedar and lavender are traditional and their effectiveness is limited.