How to give fashion and furniture a second, third or maybe even fourth life is the focus of the re:pair Festival 2024 in Vienna
Handicraft is not only a theoretical topic at Fashion.at. Repairing jeans and other fashion items is a common practice at Fashion.at. The basic skills for mending jeans are easier to acquire than, for example, fixing the brakes or gears of a bicycle. Fortunately, professionally trained craftspeople are available in-house, so applying skills to repair something is actually in Fashion.at's DNA. Mending holes in jeans gives them a second life that can last two years or more, depending on how much they are worn. The second life doesn't have to be the last. When the next holes need to be patched, the jeans go on to their third and perhaps fourth lives.
Today Fashion.at reviewed the online program of the annual re:pair Festival, which will take place for the third time from October 10th to October 27th in Vienna's Museumsquartier. The festival aims to engage the public in repairing as a sustainable practice, with over 120 events combining hands-on workshops and theoretical discussions.
This year's focus is on the environmental impact of fast fashion and fast furniture, with numerous workshops teaching creative mending techniques, including sashiko and visible mending. Admission to most events is free, emphasizing inclusivity. The festival collaborates with various institutions to offer repair clinics, lectures, and creative mending workshops. Notable activities include restoration workshops led by conservation students, walks exploring sustainability in architecture, and a participatory fashion show. The most beautifully repaired jeans from the sashiko workshops will be featured in a fashion show on October 23! (For details, see https://repair-festival.wien/modenschau/.) Among the highlights are two exhibitions: 'Touch & Feel - Quality in Fashion' at the Schauraum Angewandte in the MQ, which raises awareness of quality such as CO2-efficient linen as an alternative to cotton, with the possibility to touch the materials, and 'Great on the Outside, Ugly on the Inside' at the MQ Pop-up-Schauraum, which shows furniture in a timeline from historic to modern pieces with a focus on durability.
There might still be some places available for the sashiko workshops, as Fashion.at was told by curator Tina Zickler on the phone today. If not, it is recommended to contact the festival by email and ask to be put on a waiting list. There are many events that don't require registration, such as the lecture 'REPAIR!_FASHION the relevance of repair as a creative act in circular processes' on October 27 by researcher Evelyne Roth from the School of Art and Design Basel, who will explore the impact of repair on the fashion economy and as a socio-political statement.
Image: The pictures show a pair of jeans with a hole and how it is patched with black leather. A common repair solution at Fashion.at is to patch holes with leather. A strip as wide and long as the hole plus about 2 cm on each side is attached to the inside below the hole and sewn all the way around with a sewing machine or by hand. When the pants are worn, the barely visible black leather with a slight sheen accentuates the frayed edges of the previous hole.
