This denim alteration specialist in Singapore brings vintage, ill-fitting and torn jeans back to life

For years, I’ve been hanging on to a Levi’s denim skirt, which I’ve worn only a few times. I can still just about squeeze into it, which is why I haven’t given it away. If I lose 2kg, it will fit perfectly, I tell myself. Unfortunately, that goal has been as much of a stretch as my waistline, and the skirt sits in my closet, sad and unworn. Until I brought it to JeansFix.

It was meant to be a challenge to the good folks at the jeans alteration specialist. Sure, it’s easy to shorten a pair of jeans, but expanding the waist? No problem, said Yong Tyng Yee, the 42-year-old founder of JeansFix as she and one of her seamstresses examined my skirt. They will extend the waist by an inch by attaching an additional piece of fabric to the waistband, and a small triangle of fabric on both sides near the pockets to expand the hip area.

It helped that I also wanted to shorten the skirt, so they used the cutaway fabric for the expansion work. Otherwise, they would have scoured their fabric reserves for something that best matched the colour and finish of my skirt, and may even have sourced for suitable pieces from fabric suppliers.

The price tag for this refurbishment? S$130. Some would baulk at this, saying that the original jeans didn’t even cost that much. But it all depends on your point of view. Would it be more worth it to buy a new pair of jeans, or fix an old and treasured pair that has moulded to the shape of your hips and bum, while also saving it from landfills?

My skirt now fits much more comfortably, with a cooler and shorter hemline, and I cannot even tell where the added-on bits of fabric are. The extra waist fabric has been stitched over with thread that is the same colour as the original, and the joining is hidden behind a belt loop. Yong told me that in cases where they cannot find thread that matches, they have actually painstakingly looped the original thread into their sewing machines, preferring that over using thread that is mismatching.

Such is their level of commitment to extending the life of your precious jeans. And some of the pieces JeansFix have worked on are truly precious, as in, worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Jeans from designer labels like Saint Laurent and Bottega Veneta as well as those from cult denim brands such as Fear Of God, Momotaro and Amiri have passed through JeansFix’s humble CityLink Mall studio.

Yong said some denim connoisseurs are extremely exacting, with specific demands, such as requests to preserve the selvedge (the “self-finished” edge of a piece of fabric which does not fray and indicates that the jeans were made from more exclusive and new pieces of denim fabric). There are also requests to keep the original hem of a pair of jeans even after length alteration, which means her team has to re-connect the hem after altering the length.

The most she has charged for fixing a pair of jeans is S$600, for an old pair of vintage Levi’s. Besides being the type of jeans that is no longer manufactured by the brand, the pants also held great sentimental value for its owner. Yong told us that there were holes and frays everywhere in the jeans, including at the belt loops, and that her team mended the holes and reinforced the jeans with additional fabric, using a method called thread-matching to make sure the new threads they were sewing on the jeans exactly match the original threads and their colour.

Another pricey fix was when her team travelled to a Good Class Bungalow to collect jeans from someone who could probably afford a new pair of jeans or two, but was unwilling to let go of his holes-filled pair, instead paying S$400 to repair them.

With the price for length alteration starting from S$35 and going beyond S$55 for those looking to keep the original hem, waist alteration from S$48 to S$78+, patching with thread-matching at S$65 to S$100 per hole, and crotch and thigh adjustments from S$65 to S$95+, Yong acknowledges that her services do not come cheap, as the process is time-consuming and painstaking, since they “follow the original grain of the jeans, and restore them ‘pixel’ by ‘pixel’”.

She said that with cheaper repairs, the patching can criss-cross randomly, and the threads will start to unravel after a while. Also, they are the only ones in Singapore who do expansions. With a few hundred alterations and repairs every month, expect to wait two to three weeks, and up to one month during festive seasons, if you bring your jeans to JeansFix. 

“If customers tell me it’s expensive, I will ask them to buy a new pair of jeans,” she laughed. “Instead of buying lower-quality jeans, I’d say get good quality ones that can last for a long time, and we will maintain them for you.”

Yong told us that 70 per cent of her customers are men (“Men have this thing about their jeans, while perhaps women have other options”), and that alterations make up 60 per cent of the work, with patching and repairs making up the rest. Minor alterations in design, such as turning straight-leg jeans into a tapered-leg design, are quite common as well.

I asked if she had seen an uptick in business due to the current conscious consumerism and green fashion trend, where people are trying to buy less and make their purchases last longer. Perhaps surprisingly, Yong says there hasn’t been an increase in those wanting to repair their jeans, and that the customer base of JeansFix, which started in 2013, has always been a unique group of jeans aficionados that has appreciated denim for a long time. 

JeansFix is at #B1-06, CityLink Mall, 1 Raffles Link