The Ethical Stitch with Michelle Alleyne
The Ethical Stitch with Michelle Alleyne
🎙 Where fashion meets its conscience—and gets a glow-up.
Welcome to The Ethical Stitch, the unapologetically bold podcast unraveling the truth behind what we wear—and how it's made. Hosted by fashion sustainability expert and industry insider Michelle Alleyne, this weekly series exposes the hidden cost of fast fashion while spotlighting the changemakers, designers, and disruptors who are reshaping style with purpose.
From her front-row seat as a professor at Parsons and FIT to the factory floors of global production hubs, Michelle brings two decades of unfiltered insight, real talk, and solution-focused conversations. Whether you're a curious consumer or a fashion industry insider, this podcast is your go-to for smarter style choices, ethical design thinking, and jaw-dropping truths the labels won't tell you.
🔥 Expect hot takes like:
— “No more polyester.”
— “Stop calling it vegan leather.”
— “Why aren’t your fave designers doing better?”
Plus: actionable tips, behind-the-scenes stories, and interviews with the innovators making sustainability sexy.
If you care about the planet and your closet, pull up a chair.
New episodes drop every week. Follow @michellealleyneofficial and visit michellealleyne.com to learn more.
Because in the future of fashion, ethics aren’t optional—they’re iconic.
The Ethical Stitch with Michelle Alleyne
How Kate Sanner & Beni Are Rewiring Fashion Discovery
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What if the future of fashion wasn’t about buying more, but buying smarter?
In this episode of The Ethical Stitch, Michelle Alleyne sits down with Kate Sanner, co-founder and CEO of Beni, the platform transforming how consumers discover secondhand fashion online in real time.
At the center of the conversation is a question quietly reshaping the entire industry:
If technology helped accelerate overconsumption, can technology also help us consume more consciously?
Kate breaks down how Beni is using AI and real-time fashion discovery to bring secondhand options directly into the online shopping experience, helping consumers find resale alternatives while they browse brand-new products. But this conversation goes far beyond resale.
Together, Michelle and Kate unpack the psychology of shopping, the emotional pull of convenience culture, the rise of circular fashion, and the invisible systems shaping modern consumer behavior. They explore how algorithms, advertising, and digital culture have fueled fast fashion habits, while also asking what it would look like to build technology that supports intention instead of impulse.
But this conversation goes deeper.
This episode dives into the growing tension between sustainability and consumerism, and whether the fashion industry is truly ready to rethink its dependence on endless production and rapid consumption. Kate shares why she believes the future of fashion is not about owning more things, but about helping people develop stronger personal style, deeper intentionality, and more meaningful relationships with what they wear.
This isn’t just a conversation about resale.
It’s a conversation about behavior, identity, technology, and the future of fashion culture itself.
In this episode, we explore:
✨ How Beni is reshaping secondhand fashion discovery using AI
✨ Why convenience often overrides sustainable intentions
✨ The psychology behind overconsumption and impulse shopping
✨ How resale culture became a form of personal style and cultural currency
✨ Why AI could either worsen or improve fashion waste
✨ The tension between fast fashion, resale, and overproduction
✨ Why the future of fashion may shift from ownership to access
✨ How younger generations are redefining shopping, rental, and identity
✨ What brands still avoid discussing about sustainability and waste
✨ Why personal style may become the next frontier of conscious fashion
Stitch Mob MVP of the Week:
✨ Pickle — the fashion rental platform redefining community-based closets and shared style culture in New York and beyond.
Connect with Kate Sanner & Beni:
Follow Beni on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Substack at @join_beni
🌍 Website: shopbeni.com
🌿 The Ethical Stitch
Hosted by Michelle Alleyne
Follow us for more threads of truth:
📱 Instagram: @theethicalstitch | @michellealleyneofficial
🌍 Website: michellealleyne.com
🎙️ New episodes drop weekly.
Stay curious. Stay conscious. Stay stitched in.
🌿 The Ethical Stitch
Hosted by Michelle Alleyne
Follow us for more threads of truth:
📱 Instagram: @theethicalstitch | @michellealleyneofficial
🌍 Website: michellealleyne.com
🎙️ New episodes drop weekly.
Stay smart. Stay stylish. Stay stitched in.