Sparing the landfill with a stitch or two
Mended clothes were part of my childhood. Barcelona has reminded me that with a little help or ingenuity, we can give a second life to what we wear.
At least once a month, I stuff a few pieces of clothing into a bag, put my dog on a leash and walk up La Rambla del Raval to my local wizard.
My backpack might hold a pair of pants with a hole in the crotch or a coat whose cuff elastic has gone slack. Or it might carry a gnawed dog collar or a bag that I loaded with more than its seams could bear.
No matter what I bring, I know that the man in the pint-sized office piled high with clothes will have an answer. My tailor wields powerful magic. With a wave of his needle and few revs of his sewing machine, he can reverse years of wear and tear. Wool or synthetic, denim or cotton, he fixes it all.
After more than a year of frequenting his shop, it is a rare day that I am not wearing some piece of clothing or other — jeans, jackets, turtlenecks — that has been kept alive by his magic hand. Today, for instance, without any plan to sit down to write this, I am wearing both shorts and a shirt mended by his needle. I find there’s a special pleasure not just in saving something from the landfill, but getting to keep wearing a favorite, say, pair of pants.
This is, in truth, not the first time I’ve been lucky enough to have a, uh, sartorial surgeon at hand. I grew up with one in the basement, namely, my mother. In between dreaming up quilts and crafting original shirts for my dad, she would generously repair my torn trousers and leaking pockets. I wish, in hindsight, I’d asked for a tutorial or two in doing it myself.
In the intervening years, between my last years living at home and moving to Barcelona, there’s been no one to reliably turn to, whether in the basement or down the street. By contrast, in Raval, the immigrant-dominated South Asian neighborhood that I’ve called home since arriving here, there seems to be a tailor every few blocks. While that’s partly a story of culture and opportunity, even the more traditional corners of the Catalan capital have such shops. Yet I can barely recall seeing one in the East Bay. Granted, it would take a whole lot of patches to pay a commercial rent in, say, Oakland.
Barcelona has pushed me to reflect on the more classic elements of life in a city, what you might call the ‘hardscape’ of urban planning and design, i.e. bikes, trains, walkways. But just as a new generation of American politicians has made the case that our society’s infrastructure is incomplete without child care, it seems close-minded to ignore what is worn in the city and, perhaps more importantly, cast off.
It’s not that Barcelona has it figured out. Fast fashion is an especially Spanish phenomenon. The Inditex Group — which you might know for its flagship brand Zara, but also runs Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Oysho, Pull&Bear, Stradivarius and Lefties — was started by a Galician. The Mango brand was started by two Turkish brothers living in Barcelona, and another international label, Desigual, has its headquarters on the city’s beach.
In other words, a healthy share of the pants and pullovers polluting waterways abroad, piling up in dumps sites and turning rivers blue come from Spanish companies. Most, of course, first pass through the hands of a customer somewhere else, often in the United States. There may be tailors at seemingly every turn in Barcelona, but I’m not implying that everyone uses them, nor that they have substantially staunched the flow of throw-aways.
Yet the city offers one version of how life might be lived differently. And it’s not solely a private sector solution. In our neighborhood, the city sponsored a “Reparatruck,” a sort-of tailor on wheels that visited neighborhoods to help residents with repairs. You can also drop off old clothes at staffed recycling centers across the city. More recently, it set up a clothing exchange, and it just launched a service to pick up used clothing at your door.
America’s reactionary right-wing message machine has left enough particulate matter in my consciousness that, at first glance, such schemes give me a ‘nanny state’ vibe. Perhaps those same pollutants infect you too? Yet there’s no logic to accepting as a matter of faith that our governments pick up our plastics, but not our polyester.
Whether t-shirts or takeout trays, trash is another source of carbon emissions, all of which must be zeroed out. If we are to reduce the volume we throw “away,” we must increasingly think in waste streams – and one of those is clothing. A city program can pass your hand-me-downs to a needy neighbor — or at least divert them from the dump. A tailor, too, can prevent — or at least postpone — the demise of a garment. Even a little DIY needlework can do the trick.
drop | Mend something. Find a holey garment. Take it to a tailor. Or sew it up yourself.
ripple | Make an exchange. Donate some old clothes (in this case, without holes) to a secondhand shop. See if you can find something you’ve been looking for.
wave | Help make change. Support a campaign, like Fashion Revolution, that works to end fashion waste and maltreatment of workers. I just donated.
Have even better ideas? I’m new at this. Reply to the newsletter or email me to get in touch.
The Luzumiyat of Abu'l-Ala, LXXIV
Swathe thee in wool, my Sufi friend, and go
Thy way; in cotton I the wiser grow;
But we ourselves are shreds of earth, and soon
The Tailor of the Universe will sew.
– al-Ma‘arrī, a.k.a. Abū‘l-Alā (“the father of the sublime”)
Found at poets.org
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This issue was a collective effort. Thanks to my editor-in-chief, Roshni Kavate, and my proofreader, Steve Kay. Any errors, of grammar or judgment, are mine alone.