On repair.

A garment built to be kept will eventually need repair. This is not a flaw in the design. It is the design working as intended — a hem that can be restitched, a seam that can be reinforced, a zip that can be replaced rather than thrown away with the garment around it.

Most clothing is built to resist repair. Seams are finished in ways that cannot be opened. Hardware is proprietary or glued. The construction assumes the garment will be discarded before it fails, so there is no reason to make failure recoverable. The result is that a single broken zip pull ends the life of an otherwise sound coat.

OSH builds in the opposite direction. Standard hardware. Seam allowances wide enough to take in or let out. Components chosen because they can be sourced and replaced years from now, not because they are the cheapest available this season. A garment should be able to outlive its first failure.

Repair is the quiet part of durability. Weight and construction get a garment to the point of wear; repair carries it past it. The work of keeping a thing is less visible than the work of making it, and more important. A garment is not finished when it is sold. It is finished when it is finally set down for good — and that should take years.