Circularity without circular design: Where jeans repair delivers the greatest climate benefit

Repair is promoted as a climate strategy for clothing. Yet the consistency of this benefit across garment quality, production impacts, use patterns, and repair logistics remains undertested. We used probabilistic life cycle assessment to compare repairing versus replacing jeans in a Northern European urban context. The model covered 18 service configurations spanning collection models, customer travel modes, and logistics vehicle types. Across paired Monte Carlo draws, repair reduced life cycle climate emissions by 46–52% relative to replacement and outperformed replacement in nearly all scenarios. Baseline garment durability and production footprint, not transport, explained most outcome variation. Transport distances had negligible influence. Even dedicated customer trips by combustion-engine car tolerated median distances of 84–97 km (total travel distance) before repair lost its climate advantage. The largest per-unit benefits arose for short-lived, high-footprint jeans. We define this inverse relationship as the fast fashion repair paradox. The paradox does not imply that fast fashion should be promoted. It shows that current linear products offer the largest immediate climate dividend from repair, while circular-by-design products remain the long-term goal. These findings imply two complementary recommendations. In the current linear economy, policy and market design should expand repair access for high-impact linear garments. For a circular economy, producers should design jeans for durability, repairability, and lower production impacts.