There was a time when repairing clothes was simply normal. A torn sleeve was fixed. A hem was altered. Clothes were passed from one generation to the next. You didn’t necessarily think of it as a sustainability decision. It was just part of owning clothes. That changed as fashion became faster and clothes became cheaper. Repair became less visible, and in many places, it became almost forgotten.
United Repair Centre is working to change that. The company runs repair hubs in Amsterdam, London and Paris, works with more than 30 partner brands, and employs a team of 54 tailors. The organization works with fashion brands to bring repair back into the relationship between a brand, its products and its customers.
But this is not just about fixing a hole or replacing a zip. Repair can change how we think about value, longevity and even luxury.
In this conversation with LuxuryNext, Thami and Charlotte from United Repair Centre talk about how customers are beginning to see repair differently, why emotional durability matters, what makes repair difficult for brands and what needs to happen before repair can become as normal as buying something new.
LuxuryNext: Clothes repair used to be a normal part of life. What have you learned about how customers think about repair today, and how has that changed in recent years?
Thami, United Repair Centre:
We are seeing a big change in how people think about repair. If you go back to the 70s and 80s, repairing a piece of clothing was completely normal. We grew up with it. But then fashion changed. We moved into this buy-and-discard model, and repair became a
lost art. As clothes became cheaper, the value of the work involved in repairing them was also lost. And now we live in a world where a lot of people don’t even think that you can repair something when it is damaged.
Repair is the new cool
When we started four years ago, repair sat right at the edge of the industry. Very niche. Something you did quietly at home.
Our slogan is “Repair is the new cool.” And over the past four years, we have really seen things changing. Consumers want to be more
environmentally conscious. They want things that have more value. Emotional durability and longevity are becoming more important too. Repair can give a garment a different kind of value. It can give it a story. So repair is becoming something people want. Something desirable. A garment that is worth repairing has value. It is a garment you keep, and pass on.
LuxuryNext: You mentioned emotional durability. What does that mean to you?
Charlotte, United Repair Centre:
It is quite personal, actually. I have clothes that belonged to my grandmother any mother. They have stories and memories attached to them. I want those clothes to last. That is very different from the take-and-discard model we have become used to with fast fashion. There is a lot of value in that emotional connection. And repair helps you keep it.
LuxuryNext: What is the biggest logistical or data hurdle for brands moving repair from a niche service to a scalable supply chain feature?
Thami, United Repair Centre:
Reverse logistics is the big one. Getting a garment back from a customer, into a repair hub, and home again is genuinely complex to set up and to run. Then there is where repair sits in the chain. The closer it sits to the moment of purchase, the more life you add to the garment. And there is mindset. Brands are built around the transaction. Repair asks them to think about the whole life of the garment and the whole life of the customer.
On data, the story is opportunity. Today a brand loses sight of a garment the moment it leaves the store. Repair gives that visibility back. You learn how a product was worn, where it failed, and what the customer did next. Feed that into design and you build better products.
This is the part we built the company around. We run hubs in Amsterdam, London and Paris with 54 tailors, and a platform that handles intake, assessment, tracking and return. A brand plugs into that instead of building it from scratch.
Most of our tailors are newcomers with refugee background who arrived in Europe with twenty years of craft in their hands. Technology is what lets that craft work at the scale a global brand needs.
LuxuryNext: So where does the change actually begin? With the brand or with the customer?
Charlotte, United Repair Centre:
I think it starts with industry leaders. Companies like Patagonia have created business cases and stuck their necks out for something they
believe in. And they also help companies like us get the support we need to build a repair business. It is a very ambitious business case because everything is different. A production line is linear. You make something in the same way every time. But every person, every use and everybody is different. So, every garment can break in a different way.
You need the people, the skills and the logistics to make sure that, after repair, the garment still fits and looks good on that person.
I think a lot of brands genuinely want to change. They want to help. But it is a very complex landscape, and it is not easy to navigate. So, I really respect the companies that are willing to take the lead.
Once commercial businesses start moving, money also starts moving into the ecosystem. Then you get a response from the market. Consumer demand changes too. It is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. But if commercial businesses move faster than governments, there needs to be money going into the ecosystem to make the transition possible.
LuxuryNext: Could repair also become part of how a brand communicates luxury and value?
Charlotte, United Repair Centre:
Yes, definitely. A brand can tell you that a product is made to last, that you can repair it, that you can keep it and pass it on to the next generation. Research shows that when a brand says that, the value people place on the brand goes up. That could become part of the way a brand talks about its products.
But it is complicated too. We are still at the beginning of the adoption curve, and brands can be afraid of losing a big part of
the market. Consumers have also become used to fast fashion. They are used to asking, “What’s next?”. That makes it harder to change the way people think. The whole system needs to change from different directions. You can plant seeds and let them grow in different directions.
LuxuryNext: How do you demonstrate to profit-first corporate boards that social equity and circular metrics strengthen financial resilience?
Thami, United Repair Centre:
Everyone knows change is needed. Making it happen takes creativity. Brands on linear models are running into real problems. Products are losing value and customers are questioning what value even means. Price competition with no floor. All of it pushes brands to
rethink the model, and circular services are one of the answers.
Repair, reuse and renew are new revenue streams, and they belong to whoever builds them.
Materials are getting scarcer and products are getting harder to tell apart, so the relationship with the customer becomes the asset. Once a board sees repair as a way to deepen that relationship and raise what a product is worth over time, it reads as an investment with a clear return.
All of this runs on skill. Repair is more complex than production. Every item is made the same way, and then every person, every use, every body and every repair is different. That takes a level of craftsmanship Europe has largely lost access to. We found it in people who
arrived here with twenty years of skill in their hands, looking for a door to open. That is where our model starts. Craft first, and a social outcome that follows from it.
LuxuryNext: Looking ahead, do you think repair will become a normal part of fashion, or will it remain something mainly used by conscious customers?
Thami, United Repair Centre:
I believe it will become mainstream, but we need time, education and perseverance. I actually think that, in the future, it could become strange to buy something new when you could repair what you already have. But for that to happen, repair has to be as easy as buying something new.
If something is broken, you should be able to put it in a drop box, send it to a repair shop and get it back quickly. The whole customer journey needs to be seamless. That’s what we are working on from the brand side. But for this to become a real systemic change,
you need infrastructure across Europe and eventually across the world.
And I think there are two things that have to happen together. One is the mindset. Repair has to become something people want to do. It has to become normal. It has to become part of the culture.
The other is behavior. We are constantly competing with buying. And buying has become incredibly easy. You can take your phone and order something, and the next day it arrives. Repair has to be just as easy.
So yes, perception has to change. But the way of doing repair also has to become effortless.
LuxuryNext: What structural change do brands and retailers need to make if clothing lifespans are going to increase?
Thami, United Repair Centre:
Legislation is moving, and that helps. It puts pressure on brands and it raises awareness of why this transition matters and of what is broken today, which is overproduction and waste. The real problem is how we treat clothes. Make, wear briefly, throw away. Somewhere in there we lost touch with our garments and with the people who make them.
For the industry to change, the definition of value has to move. Today value comes from volume. Tomorrow it comes from services, from circular transactions, and from people getting the worth of their clothes back. It starts with better products and materials that last. The longevity and emotional durability of a garment is where the true value of a circular transition sits for brands.
