Fraying and Mending 3

This is the final part of our conversation with Kazuto Kobayashi, owner of OUTBOUND in Kichijoji, Tokyo. In part two, starting from a bundle of thread that had come loose and could not be thrown away, he spoke about the two directions of fraying: towards dusk, as meaning fades, and towards dawn, as meaning begins to appear. He also told us how a shirt mended again and again had become the one he wants to wear on special days, and about a pair of tabi socks that could no longer be worn, mended with gratitude before being let go.

Kobayashi: MITTAN is a maker. I imagine many people would worry that once you start mending, your clothes will stop selling. Did you have that worry?

Mitani: Not mending was never an option in the first place. The root problem is that clothes are worn for shorter and shorter periods, and that has led to people losing their lives, and to a building that housed garment factories collapsing in Bangladesh^*1. Our starting point was to make things without taking part in that, so we have kept the brand going while mending.

I had always hoped OUTBOUND would carry our clothes one day, but it felt too presumptuous to approach you directly. I deeply respected the work of Yukiko Tani, who worked with textiles in Laos, and through our conversations she brought me together with OUTBOUND.

Kobayashi: I remember. Tani said, “A young man with real conviction named Mitani would like you to look at his clothes. Please do take a look at them.” That must have been twelve years ago. Then you turned up at the shop with a suitcase full of clothes. That was the beginning, wasn’t it?

Mitani: Tani also told me, “Repairs will be hard work, but if you stop doing them, it won’t be a brand any more.” Thankfully, there are people who decided to buy our clothes because we mend them, and people who bought something after hearing your explanation. When people who have worn our clothes for a long time tell me they hardly buy anything new now, but will keep wearing what they have and having it repaired, I feel truly glad that we kept going.

With more people on the team, we can now do things we couldn’t before. We now collect all of our cutting waste, and what we make from it are the products in our ZR line.

Next year we are opening a shop in Tokyo, and we have asked ikken, who also run this venue, to design it. Building work produces a lot of waste too, so we are thinking with ikken about how to reduce waste as much as possible, both when we move in and when we eventually move out.

We mend clothes, but not everyone finds mended things beautiful, and there will always be clothes that end up at the back of a wardrobe or get thrown away at some point. So we now buy clothes back for 20% of the price, paid in cash. Some of what we buy back is in tatters, and in those cases we may take the time to mend it and sell it at a higher price than the original. We are affirming, ourselves, the value that has built up in it. I feel we have to let people know that there really is value there.

Kobayashi: You could say a price is a kind of message.

Mitani: Is there something in common between the things you brought today and our clothes?

Kobayashi: Organic cotton, hemp, silk. If I dig into why I am drawn to natural materials, of course they perform well, but there is another side to it: you can foresee that they will age well. In other words, they hold fraying within them as a potential. They have not frayed yet, but what they will look like once they do is already there, as part of their appeal. I think that is what the makers’ pieces I brought today and MITTAN’s clothes have in common.

Mitani: We’re almost out of time. If I say, “It was wonderful to hear so much from you today,” that would wrap things up, wouldn’t it? So, to finish, let me hand over to you.

Kobayashi: With talks like this, you feel you have to arrive at something like a conclusion, so at the end you can’t help wanting to wrap things up neatly. But I think that not wrapping up, and leaving a certain unease behind, may actually be what matters. Never closing the circle, so to speak.

Before the talk began, I was outside, letting my mind wander, and I heard birds singing. I wondered why birdsong is so pleasing, and I realised it is because we don’t know what they are saying. It is good precisely because we don’t understand what it means.

Text: MITTAN

1. Rana Plaza collapse: in April 2013, Rana Plaza, a commercial building near Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, which housed several garment factories, collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people.