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OEKO-TEX® announced the release of The Fashion Stitch – On Fabrics, Facts and Feelings, a storytelling podcast exploring the environmental and social realities behind the clothes we wear.
The six-part English language podcast series is co-produced with Berlin-based Fashion Changers and hosted by journalist and sustainability advocate Clare Press.
“Fashion is emotional,” says Press, founder of the Wardrobe Crisis podcast and the first sustainability editor at Vogue. “We rarely buy clothes for sustainability reasons, we buy them because of how they make us feel. That’s the real challenge: connecting people to the sustainability conversation with as much passion as they connect to their favorite garment.”
The podcast series offers insights into the lived experiences behind the global fashion system and highlights issues under growing scrutiny across the supply chain, including:
- Wages and rights: Why do garment workers still struggle to earn a living wage?
- Chemical safety: What risks do PFAS and other substances pose to human health?
- Workplace safety: Who bears the hidden costs of low-price production?
- Guests, including labor organizers, scientists and business leaders, including:
- Katie Quan, former garment worker and labor organizer
- Christie Miedema, Clean Clothes Campaign
- Katy Stevens, sustainability and chemical safety expert
- Renate Stauss, fashion researcher and educator
“Sustainability in fashion is complex, which is why we want to make it more accessible,” says Igna Bleyer, head of marketing and Communication at OEKO-TEX. “The Fashion Stitch offers clarity and builds trust by combining facts with storytelling. We want to inspire people to make better decisions through reliable, engaging information.”
The Fashion Stitch podcast was developed and written by Fashion Changers co-founders Nina Lorenzen and Vreni Jäckle, known for their work advancing sustainability and social justice in the German fashion industry.
“We wanted to go beyond highlighting problems, to tell the stories of the people working on solutions,” says Jäckle and Lorenzen. “With OEKO-TEX as a partner, we were able to explore new ways of reaching people emotionally and educationally. The Fashion Stitch is about reminding us that another industry is not only possible – it’s already being made, stitch by stitch.”
Listen to the series here.