🎙️ The Fashion Stitch – On Fabrics, Facts and Feelings

Episode 6: Meaningful Dressing – How Can We Rethink Our Relationship with Clothes?

We’re surrounded by clothes — yet often feel strangely disconnected from them.

So what would it mean to dress with meaning instead of consuming on autopilot?

💡 We explore the creative, emotional and systemic alternatives to fast fashion habits:

• Why we shop to fill an emotional void — and why buying less can increase wellbeing


• Secondhand, rental & clothing libraries: access over ownership in practice


• How circular models like Kleiderei build community instead of waste


• Repair, upcycling & emotional durability as acts of creativity and care


• Fashion as shared resource — not individual possession


• Why changing mindset may be more powerful than changing items

👥 Featuring

• Hedda Roberts – Project Coordinator, Hot or Cool Institute, on fair consumption space & emotional wellbeing


• Maria Schorn – Franchise Partner and Owner, Kleiderei Freiburg, on clothing libraries & access-based fashion


• Ian Berry – Denim Artist, on creativity & teaching the next generation through reuse

🔑 Topics we cover

• Consumption vs. fulfilment — a psychological reframing


• Sharing economies & why ownership is becoming outdated


• Emotional value and the life of a garment beyond first use


• Waste colonialism & responsibility at the end of life


• Renting, repairing, rediscovering — joy beyond “new”

📌 Sources and further reading

• Overconsumption and the Effects on Mental Health and Well-Being: A Review (2023)


• Happiness and thrift: When (spending) less is (hedonically) more (2011)


• What the Kantamanto Market fire means for sustainable fashion (2025)


• Sojo: The Deliveroo of fashion repairs (2021)


• Reducing without losing: Reduced consumption and its implications for well-being (2024)


• Hot or Cool Institute Report: Unfit, Unfair, Unfashionable – Resizing Fashion for a Fair Consumption Space (2022)


• Kleiderei


• Ian Berry

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🎧 Credits

The Fashion Stitch is brought to you by OEKO-TEX® in partnership with Fashion Changers.

Concept & Script: Vreni Jäckle and Nina Lorenzen

Editorial: Vreni Jäckle

Cover Design: Vreni Jäckle

Host: Clare Press

Production & Sound Design: Studio Tongoetze