The Maintenance Bargain

My grandfather's Barbour smelled like October mornings and sixty years of knowing. Every autumn—sometimes twice if the weather was rough—he'd spread the jacket on newspaper in the kitchen, heat a tin of Thornproof wax on the stovetop, and work it into the cotton with his bare hands. The smell was paraffin and care, friction and heat making the wax bite into the weave. It took an hour, maybe less. I watched him do it for twenty years and never once considered it a burden. It was just what you did. The coat needed knowing, and he knew it.

I don't know how to rewax a jacket. I never learned. The knowledge was there to inherit and I didn't think to take it. Why would I? I own a Gore-Tex shell that promises to keep me dry without asking me to think. It's done this successfully for four years. Last month I learned it contains forever chemicals that will outlive my grandchildren's grandchildren, and that the marketing promised "maintenance-free" but the fine print says I should reapply DWR coating every twenty to thirty washes, which I've never done because I didn't know to look.

We traded knowing for using. We traded the hour with the wax tin for the membrane we cannot see, cannot repair, cannot understand. We thought we were choosing convenience over maintenance. What we actually chose was not knowing over knowing. The PFAS crisis—99% of us carrying forever chemicals in our blood—is what happens when that choice plays out at scale.

I. The Object With A Biography

For centuries, if you wanted to keep water out, you had to know something. Medieval sailors soaked canvas in fish oil and wore the remnants as capes. By the eighteenth century, British navy men coated their garments with linseed oil, which worked until it didn't—the oil went rancid, stiffened in cold, broke down in sun. In the 1920s, a company called British Millerain perfected paraffin-based waxed cotton: breathable, renewable, readable.

That last word matters most. A waxed jacket announced its needs. You could see the wax wearing thin at the shoulders where the rucksack rode, at the cuffs where your wrists moved, along the seams where water tried hardest to penetrate. Degradation was legible. You saw it coming and intervened before catastrophe. The coat taught you to read it.

This wasn't virtue. It was the technology's requirement. If you wanted the jacket to work, you had to know when to rewax—by touch, by eye, by that particular way the fabric stopped beading water and started darkening when wet. You had to know which wax to use: Thornproof for heavy-duty waterproofing, Sylkoil for softer reproof, dubbin for leather. You had to know how to apply it: heat the tin on the stove (not too hot or it scorches, not too cool or it won't penetrate), work it into the cotton with friction, hang the jacket in a cool dry place for two days before wearing. Let it cure. Let it breathe.

The knowledge wasn't arcane. It was household common sense, passed down like pie crust technique or how to tell when bread dough has risen enough. My grandfather learned it from his father, who learned it from watching dock workers maintain their gear at South Shields, where Barbour has been rewaxing jackets since 1921. The knowledge lived in bodies, moved through generations, resided in the pause when someone ran their thumb over fabric and said, "Needs another coat, that."

These were objects with biographies. Material culture theorists have a framework for this—Igor Kopytoff wrote in 1986 about how objects develop meaning through their life histories.¹ Building on his work, scholars like Gosden and Marshall argue that objects are "not passive illustrations of human lives but active participants" that create people as much as people create them.² The grandfather's coat rewaxed thirty times isn't the same object as the new coat hanging in the shop. It carries memory in its weave: the repair at the elbow, the fading at the collar, the particular smell that's part wax and part decades. You knew this coat. You knew what it needed. You knew each other.

I find this almost too painful to contemplate, so naturally I've been contemplating it for months. What kind of relationship can you have with an object you cannot read? What happens when failure becomes a surprise instead of a conversation?

II. The Seduction Of Not Knowing

In 1969, Bob Gore was working in a lab in Delaware, trying to stretch PTFE—the polymer in Teflon—into a useful form. Frustrated that the material kept breaking, he gave it a quick yank. It stretched the length of his arms. He'd accidentally discovered expanded PTFE: a material with pores small enough to block liquid water but large enough to let water vapor through. Waterproof. Breathable. Revolutionary.

Gore-Tex entered the market in 1976, first in tents, then in rainwear the following year. The promise was simple and seductive: waterproof without work. You didn't need to rewax. You didn't need to check the fabric every autumn. You didn't need to heat tins on the stovetop or understand the difference between paraffin and neatsfoot oil. The jacket would keep you dry, permanently, without asking you to know anything.

This was the pitch: liberation through ignorance. Advanced technology would free you from the burden of understanding. The marketing didn't explicitly say "maintenance-free," though that was certainly the perception the outdoor industry cultivated. When a company publishes an article titled "Debunking the myth of Gore-Tex maintenance," you know the myth took root because it was planted. The entire category was positioned as the solution to a problem: the hassle of having to know your coat.

We accepted the trade because convenience culture had already taught us that the less you have to think, the freer you are. Microwave ovens, polyester that didn't need ironing, vinyl siding that never needed paint—the pattern was established. The best products were the ones that required nothing from you. A jacket that didn't need you back. Very modern. Very mature.

What nobody mentioned—because the science wasn't public yet, because the manufacturers had decided not to make it public—was what made the magic work. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, DuPont and 3M had known since 1961 that PFAS increased liver size in animals.⁴ By 1970, they had evidence of toxicity. In the late 1970s, 3M discovered through worker monitoring that PFAS was bioaccumulating in human blood—the body absorbed it faster than it could eliminate it. By 1981, they knew PFOA caused birth defects in rats. By the 1990s, DuPont knew it caused multiple types of cancerous tumors.

As documented by Schreiber and colleagues in their chemical documents analysis, they marked the concerning studies "confidential." They withheld legally required EPA reporting. They kept manufacturing.⁵ Forty-one years elapsed between when manufacturers documented toxicity and when health harms became publicly established through the C8 Science Panel findings in 2011-2012. Forty-one years of expansion, adoption, contamination. Forty-one years of not knowing.

This wasn't accidental ignorance. This was designed ignorance. Carbon-fluorine bonds—the strongest bond carbon can form—don't break down. Not through hydrolysis, not through oxidation, not through microbial action. PFAS persist in the environment for centuries, possibly millennia. When you coat a jacket in forever chemicals to make it waterproof, you're making a molecular bargain with consequences that outlast civilizations. But if you don't know that's what you're doing, if the company that knows doesn't tell you, if the regulatory agencies that should protect you don't know because the company didn't tell them either, then you're not making a choice. You're being used.

And here's the beautiful sick irony: the jacket wasn't actually maintenance-free. The Gore-Tex membrane might last—though it can delaminate after 100-200 days of significant use, a catastrophic failure with no repair possible—but the DWR coating on the face fabric degrades with regular washing and needs reapplication when water stops beading on the surface. The maintenance didn't disappear. It just became invisible, and therefore forgettable, and therefore forgotten.

We fell in love with a jacket that didn't need us. What we got was a jacket we couldn't understand, filled with chemistry we weren't allowed to evaluate, failing in ways we couldn't predict, requiring maintenance nobody told us about, and leaching forever chemicals into our bodies while we wore it.

The liberation was a lie. What we actually chose was helplessness.

III. The Things We Stopped Knowing

At the industry's peak in 1928, there were an estimated 120,000 cobbler shops in the United States. According to IBISWorld data, by 2025 fewer than 3,500 remain.⁷ That's a 97% collapse of repair infrastructure in less than a century.

World War II was the peak—leather and rubber were rationed, so you fixed what you had or went without. But by the 1960s, as synthetic materials and fast fashion gained momentum, the acceleration began. As of 2025, the number continues declining at nearly 2% annually. The majority of remaining shops are run by people rapidly approaching retirement age, without apprentices. When they close, the knowledge closes with them.

Where did the cobblers go? They died. They retired. They couldn't make rent. The economics stopped working when consumers chose to replace rather than repair, when a new pair of shoes cost $50 and a resole cost $150, never mind that the resole could be repeated indefinitely and the cheap shoes would be in a landfill within a year. The immediate math favored replacement. The long math favored knowing. We stopped doing long math.

But it wasn't just the cobblers. The entire knowledge infrastructure evaporated. Home economics programs, which once taught millions of students how to maintain clothing, began declining in recent decades. Budget cuts, shifting women's roles, changing educational priorities—according to NPR's reporting, by 2012 only 3.5 million students were enrolled in Family and Consumer Sciences secondary programs, down 38% from a decade earlier.¹² Maintenance knowledge was redefined as non-economic, therefore unworthy of public investment.

The rise of standardized testing and STEM education pushed practical life skills to the sidelines. We decided that knowing how to sew on a button mattered less than knowing how to code. Perhaps we were right. Perhaps we were catastrophically wrong. A University of Missouri study from 2014 found a significant gap between baby boomers and millennials in clothing repair skills—sewing, hemming, button repair, general laundry knowledge.¹³ Many more boomers possessed these skills than Americans aged 18 to 33. The knowledge transmission was broken.

This wasn't just about individual skills. It was about a way of being with objects. When you know how to maintain something, you develop what material culture theorists call "object knowledge"—sensory, emotional understandings that shape lived experience. The feel of good leather, the smell of wax biting into cotton, the weight of a jacket that's been worn and cared for and will be worn again. You learn to see degradation before it becomes failure. You learn to intervene.

When we eliminated maintenance from the equation, we eliminated the moment of intimacy. Heidegger wrote about tools being "ready-to-hand"—transparent to consciousness when they work. The hammer you're using disappears; you're aware only of the nail. But when the hammer breaks, it becomes "present-at-hand," merely there, an object you observe rather than use. Maintenance is the conversation that happens between ready and broken, the moment when you see the tool as it is, tend to it, renew it, prepare it to disappear into usefulness again.

Synthetic waterproofing eliminated that conversation. The jacket works until it doesn't. There's no gradual degradation you can read and address. The membrane delaminates, which sounds technical and is—layers separating, adhesive failing, breathability dying. You don't see it coming. One day the jacket doesn't work anymore. You replace it.

The people who could have taught us are gone. When Barbour needs to hire rewaxing technicians for their South Shields headquarters—where they reproof thousands of jackets annually—they have to train from scratch. The knowledge isn't circulating anymore. It lives in pockets, protected by companies that have a business interest in preservation, but it's no longer common sense. It's specialized skill.

And here's what breaks my heart: this used to be working-class knowledge. Dock workers at South Shields, fishermen on the North Sea, sailors in the British Navy—these were the people who knew waxed cotton. Barbour started in 1894 supplying them with waterproof oilcloth for harsh conditions. By 1980, Dame Margaret Barbour began transforming the company from a supplier to farmers and sportsmen into a lifestyle brand. By the 1990s, Barbour jackets were fashion statements worn by celebrities and fictional spies. The Bedale jacket that cost a dock worker a week's wages in 1920 now costs £279 and is sold at Selfridges.

The class inversion is complete. Working-class necessity became luxury performance. The knowledge that kept people dry in genuinely harsh conditions became a boutique service you pay someone else to perform. Meanwhile, the "affordable" alternative—cheap synthetic jackets marketed to people who can't afford Barbour—contaminated them with forever chemicals and trapped them in replacement cycles. The poor didn't get liberation. They got PFAS.

IV. The Bill Comes Due

According to CDC NHANES data and ATSDR clinical overviews, nearly all people in the United States have measurable amounts of forever chemicals in their bodies.⁶ This has been consistent since the CDC began tracking it in 1999. NHANES data shows nearly all tested participants have detectable PFAS in their blood.

After PFAS enter the human body, some remain there for years. Bioaccumulation occurs because intake exceeds excretion. The carbon-fluorine bonds that make PFAS so useful for waterproofing—the strongest bond carbon can form, and among the shortest—also make them indestructible in biological systems. They don't break down. They accumulate. In your liver. Your kidneys. Your blood. Your children's blood. Your children's children's blood.

We didn't choose this. We were chosen as test subjects without our knowledge or consent.

The regulatory reckoning is finally beginning, decades late. As documented by Morgan Lewis legal analysis, California's AB 1817 and New York's textile bans took effect January 1, 2025, prohibiting PFAS in most apparel.¹⁰ There's an exception for "outdoor apparel for severe wet conditions" until January 1, 2028, but the definition of "severe wet conditions" excludes hiking, camping, skiing, climbing, bicycling, and fishing. Only offshore sailing, whitewater kayaking, and mountaineering qualify. The legislators understood something important: for 90% of outdoor use cases, PFAS was never necessary. It was convenient.

According to Gore-Tex's company history, they have responded with ePE, an expanded polyethylene membrane manufactured "without intentionally added per- and polyfluorinated substances."⁹ Launched in late 2022, with wider availability in 2023, it reportedly performs comparably to the original ePTFE membrane—same waterproofing, same breathability, thinner and lighter. Independent testing confirms it works.

Which raises the obvious question: if PFAS-free waterproofing is possible now, why wasn't it possible in 1976? Why did we need to contaminate 99% of the human population with forever chemicals if alternatives existed?

The answer is that alternatives didn't exist because manufacturers had no incentive to develop them. PFAS worked, the chemistry was profitable, and the harms had been successfully concealed for forty-one years. Why innovate away from that? The epistemological rupture is complete: we became users of a technology we couldn't evaluate, trusting manufacturers who knew things they chose not to disclose, until our bodies became the evidence.

And now, the maintenance problem returns. PFAS-free DWR coatings are less durable than fluorinated versions. They're not oleophobic, meaning they need more diligent care to prevent wetting out. They require more frequent reapplication. The promise of maintenance-free waterproofing is officially dead, killed by the chemistry that was supposed to deliver it forever.

But the people who could teach us to maintain our coats are gone. The infrastructure that supported maintenance culture has been dismantled. Home economics programs eliminated, cobblers closed, generational knowledge transmission broken. We need the skills back exactly when we've lost the systems that carried them.

This is what happens when you design knowledge out of the system. You don't just lose efficiency. You lose the capacity to respond when the design fails. You lose resilience. You lose options. You lose the conversation with objects that lets you intervene before catastrophe.

The forever chemicals in our blood aren't an accident. They're the consequence of choosing not knowing over knowing, at scale, for fifty years.

V. The Mirror

According to WWD's reporting on Barbour's sustainability initiatives, the company rewaxes approximately 60,000 jackets globally every year.¹¹ They sell over 100,000 tins of wax for home application. In the United States, their rewaxing service has seen steady growth, with roughly 20,000 jackets processed annually. The company launched the "Wax for Life" program at Selfridges in 2020, subsequently expanding to Nordstrom, Orvis, and other retailers.

This is not nostalgia. These are people choosing to know. Choosing to spend twenty minutes with a tin of wax and a jacket that needs them. Choosing objects that degrade gradually rather than catastrophically, that announce their needs rather than concealing them, that can be tended rather than replaced.

Maintenance culture wasn't perfect. It had costs: time, skill requirements, the exclusion of people who couldn't access the knowledge or afford the tools. The class inversion of waxed cotton from working necessity to luxury fashion is real. The past is not a paradise we can return to, and I'm not suggesting we should try.

But it had affordances we forgot. Intimacy with materials. The ability to read degradation and intervene. Objects with memory, carrying stories in their scars and repairs. A relationship to the material world that was mutual rather than extractive—the coat needed you, yes, but you also needed to understand it, and that understanding was a form of competence, of dignity, of not being helpless.

We are excellent at designing things that don't need us. We are less good at designing lives that do.

The question facing us now is whether we want to relearn knowing. The cobblers are mostly gone. The home economics programs are closed. The generational transmission is broken. But knowledge can be rebuilt. Skills can be taught. Infrastructure can be reconstructed. Twenty thousand jackets being rewaxed annually in the United States suggests the appetite exists. Younger cobblers are finding success through social media, teaching repair skills to audiences who never learned them. The counter-trend is real, if fragile.

This isn't about jackets. It's about what kind of people we become when everything is a black box. When every object we depend on is sealed, proprietary, unrepairable, opaque. When we're users instead of knowers, consumers instead of maintainers, people who carry forever chemicals in our blood because we chose—or were encouraged to choose—not to ask how the magic worked.

The choice is still being made. Every garment designed for disposability instead of repair is making it. Every education budget that cuts practical skills in favor of standardized testing is making it. Every cobbler shop that closes without succession is making it. Every company that conceals consequences to protect profit margins is making it.

And every person who learns to rewax a jacket, resole a boot, read the signs of degradation in fabric, who chooses to spend twenty minutes a year maintaining something rather than replacing it—they're making the other choice. Not the easier choice. Not the one the system is designed to encourage. But the choice that says: I want to know. I want to understand what I depend on. I want objects that need me back.

My grandfather's jacket is still wearable, sixty years later. It's been rewaxed probably forty times. Someone who knows how tends it now—not me, because I never learned, but that's a failure I can still correct. The knowledge is available if I'm willing to learn. The tin costs fifteen dollars. The time required is about an hour. The relationship to objects that makes them partners rather than products—that's harder to quantify, but it's there, waiting.

We traded knowing for using, and the bill came due in our blood. The question now is whether we're willing to trade back.

Dominic Vale writes about what changes and what stays the same.