Levi Strauss & Co. is exporting its Wear Longer Project to Europe, launching the free clothing repair education program in London and Paris this week, one year after its US debut.

The company confirmed the move on the back of measured results at home: since launching in 2025 in partnership with education platform Discovery Education, the program has reached nearly 90,000 young people in the United States this year through hands-on learning, digital resources and community workshops. Discovery Education puts the combined figure at over 100,000 students in the first nine months of the partnership.

The curriculum — which teaches practical skills from sewing a button to patching a hole or tailoring a hem — aligns with national K-12 education standards and sits on a free platform available to educators and students nationwide. In Europe, the rollout will follow a different delivery model: Levi's will train employees as "volunteer ambassadors" who bring hands-on repair and customization instruction into local communities, co-led with Discovery Education.

A third party will carry operational weight on the ground. United Repair Center (URC), a long-standing Levi's repair collaborator and a new Denim Deal partner, will support the hands-on learning experiences in both cities. In Paris, URC will connect repair education with professional repair services at select Levi's stores before rolling out to other locations in France by the end of the year — a timeline that gives the initiative a measurable 2026 checkpoint.

The commercial logic Levi's cites is generational. New company research in Europe finds 43 percent of Gen Z consumers are more interested in repairing or learning to repair clothes than older generations, despite having the lowest level of basic repair knowledge alongside millennials. For a brand whose longevity claims rest on product durability, closing that skills gap among its future customer base is a direct extension-lifecycle play.

"Bringing the Wear Longer Project to Europe, starting with two of the most creative and dynamic cities in the world, gives us a great opportunity to provide more young people with skills they can use to extend the life of their garments, express who they are and pass the lessons on to others," said Paul Dillinger, VP of design innovation at Levi Strauss & Co. "The research clearly showed that young people want and value this knowledge. And our heritage and people put us in an ideal position to help teach them."

Language access is part of the expansion package. French-language closed captions for the video tutorials are now live on both the Wear Longer Project website and the Discovery Education platform, extending reach to French-speaking learners and educators.

Discovery Education framed the tie-up as demand-driven rather than brand marketing. "Expanding our partnership with Levi's reflects the continued need to provide students with hands-on experiences that connect academic learning with real-world, future-ready skills," said Catherine Dunlop, senior vice president of corporate partnerships at Discovery Education. "Through our standards-aligned curriculum and community-based activations together we have reached over 100,000 students in the first nine months of partnership."

URC's involvement ties the education push to a functioning repair infrastructure. The social enterprise already operates repair services for Levi's and signed on as a Denim Deal partner — the Dutch-origin agreement that binds brands, repairers and recyclers to circularity targets. "[This is] building a movement of brands and customers, transforming the apparel industry for the better and flipping the script from consumption to responsible ownership of our clothes," said URC founder Thami Schweichler.

For sourcing and sustainability teams, the open questions are scale and cost allocation. Levi's has not disclosed the program budget, ambassador headcount or targets for the European rollout, and the London launch lacks the store-linked service component confirmed for Paris. What is confirmed: a free curriculum, an employee-volunteer delivery model, one named service partner, and a France-wide repair-education rollout promised by year-end.

If the US pattern holds — 90,000 reached in year one — expect Levi's to report comparable European participation figures as it extends the program beyond the two launch cities.