If taking up the needle is a step too far, it’s good to know that brands such as Nudie Jeans and Tom Cridland’s 30 Year Collection offer free repairs while Patagonia and Asket have uploaded online DIY Repair Guides.

Reconnect

These are all just words on a screen if we don’t transform the way we see fashion: from the kick of the new to sartorial companion through life. It’s not entirely our fault. Cheaply produced clobber that degrades too easily or falls out of style too fast is hardly likely to inspire lifelong devotion. And this is where the ideas of slow fashion really come to the fore.

If we handle a garment and feel its heft and the care that’s been taken in its construction; if we can see, in our mind’s eye, the land the fibres have been grown in; if we know the history of its factory and the stories of the craftspeople; if we’ve bought it from a store where we’ve discovered a shared interest with the owner over the counter; if we’ve sewn on a button and mended a tear in it, then we’re more likely to love it.

And that, in the end, is what slow fashion is all about.

The Best Slow Fashion Brands

STORY mfg

The brands above make sterling efforts and deserve pride of place – and years of use – in any decent wardrobe but a few labels are gunning for the 360. STORY mfg works with dyers, weavers, embroiderers and tailors in the Indian forest to create extraordinarily good-looking togs that are animal-kind, organic and dyed with plants.

Wawwa

Young urban wear brand WAWWA mirrors the passionate vegan beliefs of its founders but its efforts go further than that. All the clothes are made in a carbon neutral factory from organic cotton and recycled PET and delivered to you in plant-based packaging.

Rapanui

And, in a technical first, Rapanui – which creates T-shirts for Katharine Hamnett and dozens of charities besides – turns its old organic T-shirts into new, again and again and again to model part of a genuine circular economy. The time has never been better to take it slow.