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Comment by WesolyKubeczek | Hacker News Reader

Apparently no tape, the zipper is bare, so special sewing machines are required and you plebs cannot just repair your clothes affordably (or yourself) anymore.

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Funny enough they mention that this new zipper cuts emisions but at the same time requires another (propietary) machine to sew them into clothing... are net emmisions actually going to be diminished?

Not only that, but DIYers and alteration/repair will be out of luck too.

All the other zippers will still exist. Clothes without zippers will still exist. Roughly nobody does this anyway.

> Roughly nobody does this anyway.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and at least here in this so-called "third world" country plenty of people makes their clothing to be repaired in any way or do it themselves (even me, sometimes)

>Roughly nobody does this anyway.

I had at least z dozen zippers replaced through my life. Some times you a very good product with poorly chosen zipper, some times it is some sort of an accident.

I find the idea of buying a new coat instead of fixing a small part of the old one weird.

This doesn't change that, I expect you can still remove this a zipper and have another sewn on, just as before

You can, but you (or rather atelier\studio) will have to buy a special machine to do so.

If these become commonplace, so will such machines.

I hope in case of success this will be just one of the programs in your generic sewing machine.

I'm afraid YKK might not be generous

I'm in my 40s and don't think I've ever replaced a zipper. I'm sure a handful have broken over my lifetime, but never on something nice enough to be worth repairing. I wouldn't buy clothing based on the possibility of this (to me) extreme edge case.

> nice enough to be worth repairing

I guess it's just cost of repair vs cost of garment. I always opt to spend $15 replacing the zipper than to buy another coat or whatnot.

That's $15 including new zipper and cost of labor?

Yes, but I live in a LCoL country.

I wonder if you could do repairs by hand stitching. Presumably the special machine does a special stitch which is lined up exactly with the teeth. A regular machine can't do that, but I bet a skilled human could.

You'd need a way to hold the zipper teeth and the fabric in place while you stitch. Maybe temporary tape or some special-purpose jig thing.

You can. You’d just attach a fabric tape zipper and the clothes would stop being as flexible. So you get the best of both worlds: a fancy zipper to start with that delivers increased performance and then you remove the performance and have an old zipper placed in there.

You just get an extra semi rigid fabric track when you repair. Your clothes should still work.

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