Guides
Part of What drives clothing repair costs: four variables
Documenting a garment properly before asking for a repair quote
What to photograph and write down before handing over a garment: damage, label wording, storage history, and the record that settles later disagreements.
Handing a garment over without a record is fine until something goes wrong, at which point everyone is relying on memory. Ten minutes of documentation before the garment leaves your hands makes the later conversation about facts. It also gets you a better quote, because you can answer the questions a shop asks.
What to take away
- Photograph the damage, the whole garment, and every label, in that order.
- Copy the label wording exactly rather than summarizing it.
- Note the storage history. Where a garment has been living explains a lot of damage.
- Keep the record with the receipt, not on your phone camera roll where it disappears.
The four photographs
- The whole garment, laid flat, front and back
- The damaged area from about a foot away, so its position is clear
- The damage close up, with a ruler alongside for scale
- Every label, sharp enough to read
Shoot in daylight or under a side light. Flat frontal light hides the depth of a worn area and makes a serious wear patch look like a mark. If the damage only shows when the garment is on the body, add a fifth frame worn, since a strained seam at rest can look intact.
Copy the label exactly
Labels are the shop's main technical input, and their placement is regulated. The rules on the required label and method of affixing require a label attached securely enough to remain on the product through distribution and sale.
A textile product with a neck must carry the country of origin label at the inside center of the neck, midway between the shoulder seams or close to another label there. Fiber content and the RN or company name may appear on that label or on another accessible one.
So there are often two or three labels, in different places, and they say different things. Photograph all of them. Where the fiber content label has worn illegible, write down that it has, because that is itself information the shop needs.
Write down where it has been living
Damage has a history, and storage is most of it. Note whether the garment has been in a damp closet, a hot attic, a plastic bag, or a drawer with wool.
Standard preventive advice runs the other way. The National Park Service leaflet on preventive conservation recommendations for organic objects lists textiles among organic materials highly susceptible to deterioration from light, relative humidity, temperature, air pollution and microorganisms. Insects and rodents also threaten them, and it puts protective enclosures and stable humidity at the top of its measures.
A garment that failed those conditions often has damage in more than one place. That helps the shop quote the whole job.
Keep the record where you will find it
One folder per garment, holding the photographs, the label text, the storage note, and the quote. Paper works. A phone album works if it is named. What does not work is four photographs among six thousand.
Once documented, the briefing conversation is short, and you will find the drivers behind the quote easier to follow because you already know the answers to most of the questions.
