On a balmy summer evening, Sary Gil of Norwalk tediously repairs one of his T-shirts with red thread using decorative stitches that look like rosebuds. You wouldn’t know it, but just three weeks ago, he sewed for the first time. Ever since, on Wednesdays after work, he’s attended Radical Sewing Club in Huntington Park.
His motivation was simple: He wanted to learn to sew so he could fix damaged clothing like this T-shirt. “My first day here I learned using the practice stitching guide. They started me with the back stitch, into the split stitch, into the blanket stitch, and the flowers.
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I wasn’t sure how the class was structured, so I came in blind,” he said. But once founder Scout Quiquivix explained that the club was started to fight against fast fashion and, by extension, capitalism, his interest deepened. The new skill was more in line with his morals than he realized.
Founded in 2023, Radical Sewing Club teaches practical hand sewing and mending skills every Wednesday night. For $5 (though no one is turned away for lack of funds), predominantly Southeast Los Angeles residents gather at Arts Space HP, a multiuse spot with a leftist bookstore, coffee shop, art gallery and community programming area. Fast fashion — when clothes are made quickly and cheaply to meet rapidly shifting trends — has been on the rise for years.
But recently, so has resistance to it. Shein, a brand synonymous with fast fashion and beloved by Gen Z, updates its website with 10,000 .