A lookbook with nothing to buy

Two damaged shirts can still contain one good shirt. Fixing Fashion makes that proposition concrete in a project called Combining two bad shirts: usable halves are joined into another garment. A stain or an unwanted logo becomes a reason to reconsider the arrangement, rather than the whole shirt’s final verdict.

The project page lists thread, scissors, pins and a sewing machine with a zigzag function, and rates the task intermediate. Those modest details matter. The finished look comes with an indication of the work involved. It is an idea somebody could learn to make, with a difficulty level that keeps the invitation specific.

One Army announced Fixing Fashion on 19 April 2021. In a feature published four days later, Dazed described the platform led by Alicia Minnaard and Dave Hakkens, and its use of fashion imagery to draw people towards repair. The collection’s presentation offers familiar pleasures of looking at clothes, then redirects that attention towards what a person might do with them.

The website labels its collection NOT FOR SALE. Alongside it are resources for care, repair and alteration. In a published interview with Willem de Kooning Academie, Minnaard distinguishes maintaining clothing, repairing damage and changing garments that no longer suit someone’s taste or size. Keeping something can involve changing it.

That leaves room for fashion’s appetite for difference. A visible join can be a choice about proportion and contrast, as well as a practical response to damaged fabric. The intermediate difficulty rating also leaves skill in the picture. Choosing a look and learning how to make it become parts of the same decision.

The two-shirt example gives the larger proposal a manageable scale. Before another garment enters the wardrobe, there may be a cut to reconsider, a seam to move or two useful halves to put together. The lookbook ends where the wearer’s work could begin.