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

🎙️ 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Sharing economies & why ownership is becoming outdated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

💌 Want to dive deeper?

🎧 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