Behind the scenes at Darn-It!, the new denim repair shop by Self Edge

Self Edge has long been the place to bring your jeans for repairs and hemming, but they’ve traditionally used outside contractors for those services. This month, they finally opened up their very own operation, and it is quite a place:

This vintage-style studio will be one of the only of its kind in the country and offers two different types of 1950s Singer Darning Machines, a rare vintage 43200G Union Special Chainstitching Machine and a 1920s  Steel Kick Press, along with a dedicated team of sewing experts.

Here’s the team at work, step by step, hemming up a new pair of jeans:

And then boom, you’re all happy about your brand-new pants:

Here’s a little more on exactly what all they can do, and what it all costs:

Darn-It! is capable of repairing almost anything one can imagine, including replacing buttons and zippers, repairing holes, fixing torn pocket bags, reinforcing leather tags,  re-chainstitching broken hem lines, and even installing real iron riveted suspender buttons. All repair services for denim jeans, jackets  and shirts are priced at a flat fee of $40 regardless of  what needs to be done to the garment or $20 if the item was bought from Self Edge. Hemming services are complimentary for all denim purchased at Self Edge and $25 otherwise.

And they do a great job. I’ve taken some severely aged jeans in, and they always find a way to get them back on their feet. If you decide to take advantage, just bring your denim to the Self Edge storefront on Valencia, and Darn-It! will do the rest.

[All photos by Mike Chino.]

41 Responses to “Behind the scenes at Darn-It!, the new denim repair shop by Self Edge”

  1. Greg says:

    Hemming blue jeans, now that is some funny shit.

  2. Brillo says:

    $40 flat fee to replace a zipper or hem your pants on an ostentatiously old-timey sewing machine? My god, they’re like the FSC of tailors.

  3. Brillo says:

    It says “All repair services for denim jeans, jackets and shirts are priced at a flat fee of $40 regardless of what needs to be done to the garment.” So not hemming, my mistake. Just $40 to fix a broken button or zipper.

  4. El Jefe says:

    I wonder if they’ll do tapering now? It’d be great if they would!

  5. Dude! says:

    I have a bunch of boot cut jeans left over from the last fashion period, can I make them into those skinny jean, manpris I see everyone wearing?

  6. scum says:

    The repairs at self edge are legit.

    • scum says:

      Fake scum wears $300 jeans and drinks $8 coffees.

      • scum says:

        I work hard for my money. mostly rounding errors to be honest.

        • scum says:

          I am smrt. Many combinations of arithmetic operations on floating-point numbers in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Works may produce results that appear to be incorrect by very small amounts. For example, the equation
          =1*(.5-.4-.1)
          may be evaluated to the quantity (-2.78E-17), or -0.0000000000000000278 instead of 0.

  7. thuglifecrunk187 says:

    shitty!

  8. scum says:

    $60 Levis $40 to fix, $300 jeans $25 to fix. Sounds legit to me.

    • Herr Doktor Professor Deth Vegetable says:

      Expensive jeans are fucking retarded, don’t get me wrong, but that being said: I don’t think you can fault someone for offering a discount on products that they, themselves, sold.

      • scum says:

        No faulting for the discount. I wish Honda offered me cheaper service then the dude working out of his shopping cart on Shotwell and 15th.

      • You Suck, Dok? says:

        KIA or Euro Supercar?
        Steel 211 or Pliny the Younger?
        Jeanz from Community Thrift or Japanese artisan denin?

        If you can afford to roll in the latter category, then why the fuck not? You get a far superior product, made of better ingredients, and with better support and service.
        Pride of ownership means a lot to people,but your opinion about dungaree retardation does not, I suspect. I will almost certainly never be able to live my life on the $$$ side of equation, but I fully support and understand why those who do, do.

        • Herr Doktor Professor Deth Vegetable says:

          Your analogies are bullshit. Levi’s are pretty much comparable in quality to the crazyass expensive jeans. Suggesting otherwise is laughable.

          You want to wear expensive status symbols on your ass? Go for it. But at least OWN your pretentiousness, instead of pretending there is some big qualitative difference.

          • You Suck, Dok? says:

            You mad, Dok?
            I wear Levi’s made in Mexico, and I’m happy with them.
            Have you ever felt the kind of denim used in those big bucks dungarees? It far exceeds that which our Levi’s are made of. It’s not about status when they outlast their more affordable counterparts by a factor of 7. Like I said, though – why the fuck not? If someone can afford them, who are you to complain? You don’t have an answer. You just call them retarded status symbols. I am essentially a middle-aged factory worker, and this is my opinion.

          • Herr Doktor Professor Deth Vegetable says:

            Sure thing. Thanks for giving me something to laugh at.

        • uhg.. says:

          50k ariel atom (honda civic motor).. 0 to 60 – 2.8 seconds
          500k ferrari enzo.. 0 to 60 – 3.1

          Cost, Ingredients, and Results.. are a hard thing to weight out. If you only have a set of jeans, and they are tough as shit, and the manufacturer will repair them for free.. then yah 300 bucks might be worth it..

          Thing only thing artisan being practiced if you charge 20 bucks for a high end product you sold is that of salesmanship.

          • Arrrrgh says:

            Please, they built about 10 original Atoms based on a Honda 2L motor (in no way a ‘Civic’ motor!), and they were never able to license them for US use, they cost well over $150k and none were for sale. But the Suck dude’s point is, buy what you can and what yo want to, I think – so buy an Atom 500 V8 if you can and want to…..nobody should tell you that’s wrong.

          • uhg.. says:

            Atoms are on sale in the u.s. under license.. for way less than 150k.

            they used the k20′s from civic type r’s.. don’t know of a 2L engine code from honda…

            *shrug*

            sure you can buy an atom 500.. and you’ll take it to the track.. but your kidding yourself if you think enzo’s are doing any track time.

          • Arrrrgh says:

            “sure you can buy an atom 500.. and you’ll take it to the track.. but your kidding yourself if you think enzo’s are doing any track time.”

            I never mentioned Ferrari. *Shrug* You gotta admit the Ariel is a go-cart made of tubes and is not a supercar at all – just a test platform, really.

  9. olu says:

    Nothing wrong with making your clothes fit better is there? Although (and I didn’t watch the video) any cleaner/ alter-er will do the same thing for you. For cheaper too.

    • Herr Doktor Professor Deth Vegetable says:

      Well, I think the difference is that Selfedge has a Darning machine. So, instead of just sewing a patch over a hole or something along those lines, it is instead, essentially creating new fabric.

      At least, that’s how darning usually works, I am assuming that the darning machine works the same way, but I could be wrong.

      • scum says:

        that is the nature of repairs at self edge. like i said, quality work.

        • Herr Doktor Professor Deth Vegetable says:

          I’m assuming that a darning machine probably takes at least four times as long as the normal patch you pay ten bucks for at most cleaners, so, really, forty bucks doesn’t seem unreasonable for a repair like this.

        • COMG says:

          Puzzle solved! Kiya = “fake scum”!

  10. _______ says:

    Obviously, none of you naysayers have any idea what a darning machine does. $40 to fix a blown out crotch and get another 6 months out of a pair of jeans? Yup, TOTALLY worth it.

    Or, just give some more money to whatever sweatshop makes your dungarees and toss the old ones, I don’t care what you do…mending is ending.

  11. Jefft says:

    Or pay $60 for a new pair of Levi’s. Those $300 jeans are nice and soft against my sensitive skin but that crotch will blow out in a year due to being so soft and thin. Good business model I guess, always have them coming back for repairs.

  12. Whiskeymittens says:

    Speaking of darning, where can I go to get some sweaters repaired? Not all tailors do knits, or do them well.

    July is coming!

  13. Ryoji likes denim. says:

    What kind of jeans did you hem? Hard to tell from the pics.

  14. TinyTim says:

    These genes will be past season at Ross/Marshalls/Burlington Coat in 22 months and will be snagged at a whopping 75% off (“Compare at…”)Ahem.

  15. VanGo says:

    You’re welcome Mr. Bot, in fact Barnacles are displaced by limpets and mussels, which compete for space. They also have numerous predators.[2] They employ two strategies to overwhelm their competitors: “swamping” and fast growth. In the swamping strategy, vast numbers of barnacles settle in the same place at once, covering a large patch of substrate, allowing at least some to survive in the balance of probabilities.[2] Fast growth allows the suspension feeders to access higher levels of the water column than their competitors, and to be large enough to resist displacement; species employing this response, such as the aptly named Megabalanus, can reach 7 cm (3 in) in length;[2] other species may grow larger still (Austromegabalanus psittacus).