Sojo launches Pledge to Repair at Institute of Positive Fashion Forum

The British Fashion Council’s 2024 Institute of Positive Fashion Forum has wrapped up with the big news being a call from repair specialist Sojo for the UK fashion industry and its customers “to get behind Care & Repair in a bid to reduce textile waste”.

The B-Corp certified fashion-tech platform has dubbed it Pledge To Repair.

Sojo was founded by Josephine Philips in 2021 as a digital-first clothing repair and alterations platform “on a mission to extend the life of clothing”. It came from Philips’ “frustrations with the vacuum of legislation in the UK fashion industry”.

And she said that “combined with Sojo’s values of fighting against our ‘make-use-waste’ culture, Pledge To Repair aims to galvanise brands and citizens to promote and commit to extending the life cycle of the clothes we own and produce through repair and long-term care”.

She added: “Many of us have followed all the progress in the sustainable fashion space accelerated through EU legislation. [But] I have definitely felt frustrated by the lack of movement in the UK. The Pledge is our effort to create a collective industry-wide movement, going beyond individual partnerships to build a collaborative coalition with the potential of influencing policy on a governmental level. It is through collective action and legislation that true change will happen at the speed it needs to.”

The Pledge will work to spotlight the brands already doing work to extend the life of their garments through repair and “form a collaborative coalition of those committed to garment longevity”.

It will see brands committing to repair; businesses committing to advocating the value and driving the implementation of repair services within their organisations and the industry at large; and consumers committing to repairing repairing their garments, “choosing repair instead of replacing worn or damaged items”.

Founding brand signatories include Sojo’s longstanding partner Ganni, as well as Nanushka, Ahluwalia, Damson Madder and more, all of them already offering repairs to their customers via Sojo’s plug and play technology.

Luxury resale platform Vestiaire Collective has also signed up and will be launching a repair service for its UK community and customer base in partnership with Sojo.

It all reflects the action-oriented nature of the BFC’s IPF event that was launched as part of a mission to move the industry to a circular economy and towards UK Net Zero goals by 2030.

To that end, the day consisted of a series of keynotes, workshops, and panel discussions followed by audience breakout sessions designed to bring together peers across industry to collaborate and fast-track collective positive change.