Just around the corner from the bustling liveliness of 8th Avenue in New York City, two patio chairs and a hand-painted sign mark the entrance to Eva Joan, a small shop in the West Village that provides a new approach to clothing alteration. The crafty brainchild of Emma Villeneuve and Bjorn Eva Park, two former production and set designers, Eva Joan’s services range from standard tailoring to reworking pieces entirely, giving them new life through custom patches and embroidery that serve as both functional repairs and personal embellishments. “One customer gave me seven of his children’s shirts to turn into patches on the knees of his jeans,” Park told me when I went to visit on a recent afternoon.
The concept of reworking and reusing existing garments — otherwise known as sustainable, “slow,” conscious or upcycled fashion — is far from new. Brands from Bode to Re/Done have embraced the use of antique or deadstock materials in their designs. But what sets Eva Joan apart is the ethos at its core: getting the customer involved in the upcycling process—even if they don’t know their way around a sewing machine—while encouraging them to reevaluate what’s in their closets. Could that ripped shirt in the back of your armoire be reworked into part of a jacket? Perhaps even an old moth-eaten coat could be brought back to life with some floral embroidery? In the capable and creative hands of Villeneuve and Park, everything has potential and nothing is wasted.
“What happens a lot with sustainability is that people are like, How do I even begin?” Park said. She shared her own frustrations with trying to get conventional tailors to take on out-of-the-box projects, like replacing the sleeves of a vintage bomber jacket with floral deadstock fabric, or sewing up holes with multicolored threads: “We spent so much time searching, and I had gone to literally every tailor being like, ‘I’m begging you to do this.’ But they constantly talked us out of…
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