4 New York City-Based Experts on How to Make Your Clothes Last Much, Much Longer

I started working on this story a few weeks ago, when the stakes of the world felt quite different, and the hours I spent interviewing these experts constituted the bright part of my day. Listening to their stories, I learned about pockets of New York where Chris, Vincent, Miriam and Wayne focus on maintenance, repair and problem-solving on a daily basis, serving as local heroes on a small physical scale and a vast emotional scale. During our conversations, I mentally sifted through my closet—a catalogue of imperfections—and thought about new ways to approach untreated problems, like the blotch of red gouache I got on a white dress while painting a few summers ago, or my favorite Trademark dress which, it turns out, is in need of an at-home hand-wash. Read on to learn about their solutions-oriented wizardry.

Chris Moore of Artbag

Artbag is a handbag repair and cleaning facility on New York’s Upper East Side. They also repair shoes.

On working with his father in the family business

I was trained by my father. I started learning about handbags at an early age, and I started professionally in 1993. We’re on Madison Avenue and 84th Street. The store’s been in this location since 2001, but it’s been on Madison since 1960.

My father and I came to a conclusion when I first started that everything we do at Artbag, stays at Artbag. Once you leave the store, there are no more conversations about Artbag. Whether you need to come in early and have a discussion, or stay late and have a discussion about the business itself, we don’t discuss business outside the door. Compartmentalizing has been wonderful.

Protecting suede

Issues with suede arise because customers don’t protect the bags before they wear them. When you do that, you’re asking for trouble. Anytime a suede bag is purchased, it should be sprayed with a protectant before it’s actually used. That helps prevent any issues that can’t be rectified in the future. We like Fiebing’s protectant product best—it’s a water and stain protectant.

When it comes to suede bags, customers should also take into consideration that they shouldn’t wear light-color suede bags with denim, because a denim transfer can occur. Once the denim transfer occurs, even if it’s sprayed, it’s fairly difficult to remove. That also holds true for linen and canvas bags.

Tips for making your bags last a long while

The first thing when it comes to zippers is to not overstuff your bag. Once you overstuff the bag, you are causing the zipper to do things it’s not supposed to do. Quite often if you’re overstuffing your bag, you’ll actually zip something into the zipper itself. The teeth won’t match up any longer, and that’s when the zipper will start to separate.

One other thing customers should be cognizant of—and I always tell them this—is to keep your bags on rotation. Don’t continuously wear one bag every day.

When it comes to leather bags, we use a neutral, colorless shoe polish. You always try a polish on the bottom of the bag first, to make sure you get the desired effect. Then you can continue with the rest of the bag. And if you follow the directions on the jar, you shouldn’t have any problems.

On saving the day for Russell Brand

Russell Brand was hosting the MTV awards quite a few moons ago, and he had a belt that he had custom-made in England. The snap actually broke on the day that he was supposed to film the awards (which were in New York that year). He needed to have the snap replaced in a short period of time, and we were able to do it for him.

Jackie O. was a client here when she was around. I don’t care to give out the client’s name, but one of the most interesting requests we’ve had was a steamer trunk that we totally refurbished. There were maybe 2,000 nails that had to be removed. So we went through and completed the job, which took about three weeks. The steamer trunk ended up in a museum!

New York foot traffic

The number of vacancies on Madison Avenue is actually scary. And I’m not even talking in respect to the buyers that come into my store—the foot traffic is absolutely abysmal. There was a time when you couldn’t get a parking spot. I’m looking outside as we’re talking, and you could get something out on either side of the street.

We’re increasingly getting sales from our online presence, where we have customers who send things in from around the world. This helps out tremendously.

Vincent Rao Jr. of Vince’s Village Cobbler

Vince’s Village Cobbler is a shoe, handbag and accessory maintenance provider in SoHo.

On finding his own place in the family business

About 10 years ago, my father decided to incorporate a shoe repair shop next to his already existing tailoring shop, Village Tailor, which has been there for 45 years. I was growing up, starting to get an interest in things, and he introduced me to this store. I started managing it when I was about 15 years old. We’ve always been on Sullivan Street in SoHo.

By the time I graduated from college, I was ready to make the business mine. I introduced my girlfriend to the business, and now we both manage it. We’re college-educated individuals managing a shoe repair shop, and we’re using our skills and ability to bring it to the next level.

There’s definitely demand for this industry. We recently started a mail order system. It’s fairly new, so by comparison there’s definitely a lot more foot traffic. But that’s just now, you know? I think eventually this industry will be online, with the modern shipping features we have.

We work with almost every material. We work with leather, we work with fabric, we work with suede, nubucks—anything really. Anything that a shoe or a bag or any accessory, like a belt, is made out of—we work with that. We even have hardware replacements, for little rivets, snaps and so on. There are so many little, tiny things that we have to carry in order to accommodate every single luxurious, expensive accessory that exists.

Taking care of suedes and fabrics, like satin

We work with satin up to a certain extent. Satin is more of a fabric: I would definitely consider satin as one of the more delicate materials, in the same category as suede or nubuck. Satin is very hard to clean and maintain. As soon as you put a brush or chemical to it, you risk damaging it.

My customers ask me, “How can I maintain a light pair of sneakers or a light suede bag?” In reality, if you don’t want to damage it, you’ve got to keep it in your closet and you can’t use it. People don’t like to hear that. If you want to use something that’s delicate and light-colored, no matter what you do, no matter what you spray on it, it’s always going to get dirty. That’s just the nature of the material.

For suede and fabrics, you can’t apply any cream or moisturizers or anything. You can only apply a cream or moisturizer to a skin, like a leather. A lot of these products contain waterproofing agents. They also contain moisturizing agents to keep the leather soft and supple, so it’ll prevent it from getting dry, cracking, and aging quickly. You could also use a wax or a shoe polish for any leather.

When caring for suedes, nubucks, and satins, we have waterproofing sprays, which are these chemicals that you’d spray on the accessory, the shoe, the bag, whatever it is, and it’s completely clear. It leaves no marks. It’ll leave a smell for a little bit, but that smell goes away. That’s really the only thing you could apply to material like a suede or a fabric.

The most common issues that we’re solving? We do a lot of sole protection. A lot of high-end manufacturers sell very expensive shoes with leather soles, and those leather soles are very susceptible to getting damaged. The soles absorb water like a sponge, and the water can spread and damage the upside of the shoe if the soles aren’t protected. I would always advise adding some sort of rubber grip protection at the bottom of any high-end shoe.

We do a lot of painting and a lot of restoration here. People buy $1,000 Chanel shoes and wear them out in the rain or the snow, and salt ends up destroying them. Then we have to resole them. We use a special de-salting chemical, and then we reapply a polish and repaint the sole. We do a lot of heel work, too: People break down the heels on their shoes and don’t even realize it.

Working miracles

We don’t know what the facts are, but we had one customer—we assume she might’ve cheated on somebody, because she brought us a couple of high-end bags that were all slashed up. We’re talking about $1,000-2,000 Louis Vuitton bags. Someone took a knife to them and just sliced them in half. We actually restored them.

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After a little bit of creative engineering and a whole lot of stitching, we are proud to say that we brought this @louisvuitton back to life