The Long Life: Why Longevity Is the Most Overlooked Sustainability Strategy

Jenny Daphne Pitsillides – Editor | Re:Fabricate — Real Solutions for a Better Fashion Industry

A leather handle darkens where a hand rests. The fabric at the elbow softens first. These are not flaws. They are records. Proof that an object has stayed.

Longevity rarely photographs well. It resists the urgency of newness, the sharp intake of breath that accompanies a seasonal reveal. And yet, in fashion’s crowded sustainability conversation, it remains one of the most powerful and least discussed strategies. Not because it is radical, but because it is slow.

This is a subject that speaks quietly to luxury houses, to independent retailers, to designers who understand that value is not only created at the point of sale. For spaces like Selfridges and Wolf & Badger, longevity offers a bridge between aspiration and responsibility without demanding spectacle.

Time as a design material

Designing for longevity begins long before sustainability enters the conversation. It lives in decisions about cut, fibre, construction and finish. It is the choice to reinforce a seam that will never be seen, to favour a button that can be replaced, to allow fabric enough integrity to age rather than collapse.

Luxury has always understood this, even when it has not articulated it as such. The language of heritage, craftsmanship and permanence has long implied endurance. What has shifted is the need to make that endurance legible again, in a market saturated by accelerated cycles.

Longevity treats time as a collaborator. A garment is not finished when it leaves the studio. It completes itself through wear.

Buying fewer, better things

The phrase is familiar, almost overused. And yet, it remains quietly subversive in a system built on volume. Buying fewer, better things challenges not only consumption habits, but retail logic itself.

For customers, it reframes value. Cost per wear replaces initial price. Fit matters more than novelty. For retailers, it shifts the relationship from turnover to trust. A store becomes a place of return rather than replacement.

Wolf & Badger’s model, built around independent brands and considered production, naturally leans into this logic. Pieces are often bought with intent rather than impulse. The transaction is slower, more conversational. Longevity is embedded not through instruction, but through curation.

Repair as authorship

Repair has long carried an air of necessity rather than desire. Something you do when replacement is impossible. Increasingly, designers are reclaiming it as a form of authorship.

Visible mending, modular construction, spare parts offered at purchase. These gestures acknowledge that wear is inevitable and valuable. They invite the wearer into the life of the object rather than positioning them as a passive end user.

For luxury, repair reinforces provenance. A repaired item carries the mark of both maker and wearer. For designers, it offers a way to extend responsibility beyond sale without claiming control.

Selfridges has experimented publicly with repair services and in store mending, not as a corrective, but as an extension of luxury service. The message is subtle but significant. Care is part of ownership.

Emotional durability

If physical durability keeps a garment intact, emotional durability keeps it relevant. This is harder to quantify and more revealing to consider.

Why do certain pieces stay while others drift out of rotation? Often it is not quality alone. It is memory. Association. The way a garment fits into a life rather than a look.

Designing for emotional durability means allowing space for attachment. Avoiding overly specific references that date quickly. Offering silhouettes that adapt to changing bodies. Choosing colours that do not shout for attention but hold it over time.

This is where independent designers often excel. Close proximity to the wearer encourages sensitivity to lived experience. The garment is imagined not on a runway, but in a week.

Timelessness without nostalgia

Timeless design is frequently misunderstood as neutrality or restraint. In reality, it is about proportion, balance and restraint rather than absence of character.

Trends announce themselves loudly. Timeless pieces often whisper. They can still be expressive, even bold, but they resist the markers that tether them to a specific moment.

For luxury houses, this distinction matters. Timelessness allows for continuity without stagnation. It makes space for evolution rather than erasure.

Retailers play a role here too. Buying decisions that privilege longevity over immediacy shape what customers come to expect. Over time, this recalibrates taste.

The overlooked strategy

Longevity is overlooked because it is difficult to monetise quickly. It does not lend itself easily to reporting cycles or campaign imagery. Its success is measured in years, not seasons.

Yet its impact is cumulative. Every garment worn for twice as long halves its footprint in simple terms. Every repair delays replacement. Every emotionally durable piece reduces churn without demanding moral alignment.

This is not a call for austerity. Nor is it an argument against fashion’s expressive potential. It is an invitation to reconsider what progress looks like when speed is no longer the metric.

Longevity does not promise perfection. It offers something quieter. Continuity. A way of staying with what we already have, long enough for it to matter.

References

Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2021) Durability and Longevity in Fashion.

Chapman, J. (2015) Emotionally Durable Design. Routledge.

Cooper, T. (2010) Longer Lasting Products. Gower.

Selfridges Group (2022) Repair and Resale Initiatives.

Wolf & Badger (2023) Brand Curation and Responsible Retail.