Cactus Outdoor: Restore, Then Reimagine

Most of what fashion calls sustainability is a press release with a photoshoot. Recycling gets the marketing budget because it lets a brand keep selling the same volume, while reduce, reuse and repair all mean selling less. Cactus has spent 34 years doing this the hard way. In 2019 it bought the Albion factory believing ownership would fix the problem, and learned that control over how a garment is made matters but isn’t the whole answer. Its next attempt is CactusLab, where repair is part of the product through logistics, training, pricing and design for repair. Ben Kepes argues that fixing a garment is only maintenance, and the harder work is reimagining what a clothing company sells.