The Keela Legacy Project, among other things, breathes new life into old and damaged garments like my Talus Jacket, writes Mike Gormley.
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The Keela Legacy Project, in their words, has an Eight Branch Initiative and this starts with you the end user; ‘Care’ is the first of the eight branches. Keela offer a raft of information on how best to look after and care for your garments and I reckon this is well worth a read. Much is pretty obvious really but, as ever, we can all learn from the experts and let’s face it Keela have been in this game for a lot of years, both as manufacturers and especially as innovators.
Many years ago I was chatting to Sam, one of the Co-directors, and her advice which I have stuck to was to ALWAYS and ONLY use pure liquid soap and a warm wash. This makes complete sense with many outdoor garments as they often have ‘technical’ fabrics and treatments in their manufacture and the last thing needed is to wash it all out. Also fabrics such as Merino wool should be treated with the care they deserve to preserve their special qualities. Good materials need to be able to do their job properly and they do this better if clean. Much of our kit is not cheap so we should care for it accordingly and it will repay us by lasting for years. That is, of course, unless you damage it like I did with my Keela Talus jacket!
Those old and battered garments we almost all certainly have can often be given a new lease of life. Repair is the second of Keela’s ‘eight commandments’ and the company has had a Clothing Hospital located at their HQ in Scotland since the 1980s. Not long back I was a bit careless while wearing my much loved and well-worn Talus Jacket. I touched it on the hot ring of a large communal gas stove at an event and burnt / melted a part of the sleeve fabric; I was gutted! Although it was still a functioning jacket it did not look all that great.
Then I remembered the Keela Legacy Project and got in touch. “Send it up!” was their response, so I did. I soon heard back that it was quite repairable, so I left it in their capable hands. The fix required the burnt section to be cut out and replaced with a new panel and there was no problem in getting a fabric match with mine as it is still a current item. Other plans can be made for very old garments if required. However, for my Talus it was carefully reworked to replace the damaged area, sewn back together and returned to me looking no worse for the experience. In fact, you have to take a very close look to see the repair but if you did not know you most likely would not realise it had been done.
A very good result for me. My repair was really quite straightforward for a skilled seamstress but they will do all they can to keep a garment in circulation and up to its normal specification and capability to ensure it is not sent off to landfill or stuffed into a box and left in the back of the shed for the mice to find on a cold winter’s night.
If you feel your trusted old jacket really has come to its natural end of life and you need / want a new one, there is another plan. Send it back to Keela as part of their ‘Second Life’ project and they will re-purpose the materials into something else. Alternatively, if you are a bit handy with fabrics you can tap into their skills and knowledge and request ideas and designs to have a go yourself. So your old and much treasured jacket of a 1000 hills can be remade into maybe a bag or two and live on.
Then there is ‘Déjà Vu’. Here Keela will rework and repair new items that have become damaged in transit and so on and when repaired / cleaned and they will sold off at very ‘competitive’ prices. Well worth a look and I can say I have made good use of this idea. Some years ago I was able to acquire a quantity of jackets for some young folk I was working with, which as great and very helpful, and more recently another batch of gear found various deserving young folk and put smiles on faces when enabling them to get outdoors in comfort and be kept dry and warm.
Other strands of the Eight Branch Initiative include: ‘Reclaim’, where materials are used up to make more unusual items and garments ~ I saw a Keela version of the Technicolour Dream Coat at OTS one year; ‘Recycle’; where Keela will take on the end-of-life garments and find uses for the materials; ‘Archive’, where end of line items are sold on not stored away; and finally ‘Blueprint’, where experimental test garments are sold off. All are available through the Keela online shop and well worth a look if you are looking for a good deal.
Meanwhile, at time of writing my Talus Jacket is packed ready for its next adventure.
[images © Mike Gormley or Keela]
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