Fixing Fashion is a global platform aiming to teach and share knowledge to users for free about the best and most efficient ways to care for, repair, and upgrade their clothing and to create a strong community of clothing wearers that prolong the use of their clothes.

The fashion industry creates a copious amount of waste and, with the rise of fast fashion brands (H&M, Zara, Shein), it seems to be getting larger and larger. According to the BBC, the average American throws away 37kg of clothing a year. An extremely high number that shocks most when heard. By 2050, we are estimated to be discarding more than 134 million tonnes of textiles a year (Ellen Macarthur Foundation).

By approaching the consumer and giving them the tools for free to repair and care for their clothes, we can exclude the clothing waste stream. With a repair or swap business model, discussed under the Sustainable Clothing Action Plan 2020, WRAP determined that if 5-10% of clothing sales are via these models to extend their active life, the savings could be 30 - 50 million cubic meters of water and 80,000 - 160,000 tonnes of carbon emissions. These methods extended the average garment’s life from 3.3 years to 4.5 years. If this amount is brought to the current American waste stream, 1.22 million tonnes of textile waste could be saved yearly. 

Fixing Fashion was in research for over two years, including interventions, interviews, workshops, and field trips through Kantamanto in Accra, Ghana, and several donations and sorting centers throughout Europe. Learning from the community the best practices and methods to recycle and repair discarded clothing. Then applying this research to easy-to-understand techniques and videos.

About One Army:

One Army (previously Dave Hakkens) is an NGO starting and developing sustainable projects to help better the environment. Whether tackling technological waste through Phonebloks or local open-source plastic recycling with Precious Plastic or prototyping an alternative way of living via Project Kamp, One Army consistently tries to find workable open-source solutions to some of the world’s most dire environmental problems. Fixing Fashion aims to tackle the ever-growing waste of the fashion industry.