Read the Label: The Question We Forgot to Ask About Our Clothes

What exactly are we putting on our bodies?

Not "is it fashionable" or "does it fit" — but literally, what is this made of? We wear clothing against our skin for hours a day, every day. We sleep in it, sweat in it, wrap our children in it. And yet most of us have never been taught to ask the most basic question about it.

In this episode of Styled Clean, image consultant and Allegory Styling founder Kathleen Audet asks us to do something we already do with food but rarely do with fashion: turn the label around and actually read it.

Kathleen walks through the soil-to-skin journey of a garment — from fiber (cotton, linen, wool, hemp) to synthetic alternatives like polyester and nylon, through dyeing, finishing, and the chemical treatments (stain resistance, wrinkle resistance, PFAS/"forever chemicals") that happen along the way. This isn't a fear-based takedown of your closet. It's an invitation to curiosity — noticing which garments last, which ones you reach for again and again, and which ones quietly don't serve you.

Along the way, Kathleen connects this practical awareness to a deeper conviction: that stewardship — of our bodies, our land, and what's entrusted to us — changes the questions we ask about what we buy and wear. A cotton shirt begins with soil. A wool sweater connects us to an animal, a rancher, and the land. Fashion isn't just happening on runways — it starts in fields.

This week's challenge: Choose 10 things you wear regularly. Turn them inside out. Read the labels. Notice what you find. You don't have to fix anything or throw anything away — just start paying attention.

One peaceful decision at a time.

🔗 Learn more about Kathleen's work at allegorystyling.com and yourauthenticimage.com
📬 Subscribe to Letters139 for more reflections on identity, stewardship, and what we wear

This week on Styled Clean we welcome Bonie Shupe. Her path into textiles wasn't traditional — she started in graphic design, moved into merchandise planning, and fell in love with product. Then she learned that fashion is the second largest polluting industry in the world, and she couldn't unknow it. She went back to school for fashion and textile arts and became a maker firsthand, crafting her own textiles from fiber to finished product. She lived and worked with artisans in Peru, India, and Guatemala, learning what real skill and real cost goes into handmade textiles.

After years in corporate roles and factories — watching how little visibility most brands have into their own supply chains — Bonie stepped back to focus on what matters most to her: circularity and traceability, which she sees as the true antidote to greenwashing. She's earned international design and innovation awards along the way, and leads with a fail-fast-to-succeed-sooner philosophy.

On this episode, Bonie joins us to talk about the real cost of a garment — to the earth, and to the maker.In This Episode

• (02:22) Bonie's origin story — from graphic design to merchandise planning to falling in love with product, and the moment she learned fashion is the second-largest polluting industry
• (04:17) Becoming a maker first — hand-crafting her own textiles from fiber to finished product
• (04:46) Living and working in Peru with the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco and weaver Nilda Alvarez, then sourcing trips and extended artisan stays in India and Guatemala
• (06:11) Why fair trade certification works well for factories but often shuts out the artisan makers who can't afford to get certified
• (07:07) The four tiers of apparel manufacturing — cut-and-sew, fabric, spinning/weaving, and fiber — and why most brands, even large ones, have little visibility past tier one or two
• (09:59) A real example of certification gone wrong: a sock manufacturer intentionally wasting nylon just to legally call it "recycled"
• (13:20) Traceability as the real fix — and why the EU's Digital Product Passport (arriving 2027) and Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation matter, even for US brands
• (14:19) "Sustainable babble" — Bonie's term for the jargon brands use to sound green without meaning much
• (15:49) Inside Bonie's recent circularity tour of Brussels, Italy, and Portugal — recycled textile and next-gen fiber expos
• (18:38) AI-powered textile sorting, chemical recycling that breaks down polyester and nylon blends, and true fiber-to-fiber recycling versus "downcycled" recycled-bottle polyester
• (21:02) Inside Prato, Italy — the wool recycling capital of the world, and a tour of Manteco, where color is created by blending recycled yarns rather than dyeing
• (26:38) How Rewildist got its name
• (29:05) Why Bonie never specialized, and how that shaped her career across design, development, and materials
• (35:04) A real failure: trying to recreate the magic of merino wool in alpaca fiber, and the technical reason it didn't work (crimp count)
• (37:28) Fail-fast-to-succeed-sooner as a philosophy for women in product development — and how it echoes Kathleen's own styling philosophy: you have to wear the clothes, feel them, and get it wrong before you get it right
• (42:04) Why the average woman owns 150–200 pieces of clothing but only wears 20–25% of it, and what that has to do with sustainability
• (44:52) Bonie's one piece of advice for every shopper: read the label and composition before you buy
• (47:23) Where to start building a more sustainable closet: the layers closest to your skin — underwear, bras, tees, socks

Styled Clean | Episode 12] Every Square Inch: What Your Closet Has to Do with Justice, Creation, and the Breadth of Grace

with Beatrice Shackelford

"Do you want it to not matter? Because if we're serious about what Jesus does on the cross — we want it to matter what we wear." — Beatrice Shackelford

What does redlining in Cleveland have to do with the blouse hanging in your closet? More than you'd think.

In this episode, Kathleen sits down with Beatrice Shackelford — environmental scientist, Kuyper Prize scholar, and incoming Yale Master of Environmental Management student — for a conversation that moves from the East Side of Cleveland to the floors of COP29 to your grandmother's quilt made from flour sacks. And somehow, it all lands back in the fitting room.

Beatrice brings a rare combination: rigorous academic thinking about environmental justice and a deep, joyful faith that refuses to split the sacred from the everyday. She'll make you want to read Abraham Kuyper. She'll also make you want to call your grandmother.

This one stays with you.

What your grandmother's quilt knows that fast fashion doesn't Beatrice spent time with her grandparents this summer and stood in her grandmother's living room surrounded by things with provenance — a table with wooden wheels, a quilt made from Depression-era flour sack fabric. She connects that rootedness to the stewardship calling we've quietly outsourced to algorithms and Amazon carts.

The conversation gets stuck at the individual consumer — and why that's a problem Companies love to make this a you problem. But Beatrice argues it's also a community problem, a skills problem, and yes, an industry and government accountability problem. She makes the case for rebuilding a culture of thriftiness — without romanticizing poverty.

Beatrice Shackelford

• Instagram: @beamae212

• BioLogos Creators for Creation cohort — https://biologos.org/creators-for-creation

Abraham Kuyper

• Common Grace Volumes 1–3 — https://stylists.shop/Q49

• "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!"

Rena [last name] — Ugandan sustainable fashion designer, met at COP29

• [LINK TO HER WORK / INSTAGRAM when available]

COP29 — United Nations Climate Change Conference

• [https://unfccc.int/event/cop-29]

The Lie of the Donation Bin — Kathleen's article

• [https://allegorystyling.com/creation-care/the-donation-bin-lie-and-what-were-really-afraid-to-ask/]

Joshua Becker — minimalism writer, The More of Less

• [LINK — https://stylists.shop/Q4a

Bezalel — the first named artist in Scripture (Exodus 31:1–5), filled with the Spirit of God for the work of his role in the construction of the Temple: https://biblehub.com/topical/b/bezalel.htm

Food Deserts — [USDA Food Access Research Atlas https://www.aecf.org/blog/food-deserts-in-america]

Redlining — [https://legalclarity.org/what-is-redlining-definition-history-and-laws/

What does it mean to be a Christian on planet earth — and what does that have to do with what's in your closet? Kathleen sits down with author, speaker, and Earthbound Christian host Caleb Cray Haynes for a wide-ranging conversation about creativity, embodiment, imago Dei, fast fashion, and the radical idea that how we show up in the world — dressed and otherwise — is a theological act. From Leviticus 19 to lint traps, this episode covers unexpected ground and leaves you with a lot to think about before you get dressed tomorrow.

About Caleb Cray Haynes

Caleb Cray Haynes is a speaker, author, and creator whose work explores what it means to follow Christ in the material, embodied, everyday world. He is the author of Garbage Theology and Earthbound Christian, and works with churches and communities on themes of creation care, consumer culture, faith, and presence. He and Kathleen connected in Tennessee — he was asking what it means to be a Christian on planet earth; she was asking what it means to be a good steward of your closet. The conversation you're about to hear is what happens when those two questions meet.

In This Episode

Creativity isn't for a select few — it's baked into being human. Caleb unpacks the way our culture has "subcontracted" creativity to a certain kind of person — the artsy kid, the school of the arts type — when in fact being made in the image of the Creator means creativity is part of everyone's DNA. Kathleen connects this directly to her work with clients: many women arrive convinced they're not creative, that style is for someone else. The real work is resurfacing what's already there.

Kathleen names what drives Allegory Styling at its core: you are an image-bearer of God, and how you show up in the world reflects that. What does it look like to dress as someone who bears the image of the Creator — not to impress, but to represent? This question, she argues, is not superficial. It is deeply theological.

 Caleb takes the conversation somewhere unexpected: the Holiness Code. "Love your neighbor as yourself" appears in the same chapter as instructions about sideburns, clothing, and how you pay workers at harvest. It all belongs together. The assignment has never been "dress to impress" — it's been "what does it look like to express love in the world through how we live, consume, and move?"

 Caleb's phrase — "the assignment was never to dress to impress, but to dress to follow Christ" — is one of the most quotable moments in the episode. This lands squarely at the heart of the Allegory Styling brand: dressing for approval versus dressing as an image-bearer.

Kathleen articulates her underlying hope for clients: to help them get dressed in a way that lets them forget what they're wearing and be other-centered. The goal is freedom, not fixation. Confidence in how you've shown up so you can actually show up for others.

Resources and References

• Earthbound Christian by Caleb Cray Haynes
• Garbage Theology by Caleb Cray Haynes
• Falling Upward by Richard Rohr
• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
• Soles 4 Souls
• Trashie (sustainable fashion brand)
• ThredUp
• Allegory Styling — Kathleen's faith-integrated image consulting practice
• The Wardrobe Values Quiz at AllegoryStyling.com

"Does your style speak to your identity, or does your identity let people know what you're styling?" — Caleb Cray Haynes

"I help women stop dressing for approval and start dressing as image-bearers — because how you show up in the world matters to God." — Kathleen Audet

"Dress the body you have." — Kathleen Audet

"Joy is the super ingredient. If it's not pouring out in your life, the recipe might be off — put it back in the oven." — Caleb Cray Haynes

"You are God's, and you belong." — Caleb Cray Haynes

Connect with Caleb Cray Haynes

• [Caleb Cray Haynes website]
• Instagram: [@CalebCrayHaynes]

Connect with Kathleen

• AllegoryStyling.com
• Take the free Wardrobe Values Quiz
• Instagram: @allegorystyling
• Styled Clean podcast — available wherever you listen

What does a blouse made for twelve dollars have in common with gleaning laws in the Old Testament? More than you might think.

In this episode, Kathleen sits down with Aislynn Patrick, co-host of the podcast Rivers in the Desert (with Beatrice May Shackelford), to explore the rich and sometimes overlooked biblical mandate for creation care — and what it has to do with the clothes we wear every day.

Aislynn brings a warm, story-driven perspective to the often-charged conversation around climate change, drawing from her background in ministry, her time studying at a Bible college in the UK, and a deep love of being outside. She and Kathleen find surprising common ground between regenerative farming, bird apps, fire escape planters, and the calling to be faithful image bearers in the world God made.

In This Episode:

• The origin of the name Rivers in the Desert — drawn from Isaiah 43 and a theology of hope and restoration
• Why vulnerability matters in climate conversations — and how to discern when to share and when to hold back
• A plain-language definition of creation care as both a heart posture and a practical way of life
• How spending time in nature has deepened Aislynn's awareness of God — including a windswept beech tree on a hillside in England
• The surprising parallel between regenerative farming weeds in a parking lot and the ones on working farmland
• Common misconceptions about creation care in Christian spaces — including the idea that it's "a forced addition to scripture," too politically charged, or only for people who are already into it
• Why Revelation's statement that "God will destroy those who destroy the earth" is more serious than most of us treat it
• The Merlin Bird ID app — and how naming things in creation changes how much you notice and care about them
• Practical, low-barrier ways to reconnect with creation, starting with prayer and your own interests
• Clothing as a creation care issue: Aislynn reflects on fast fashion, greenwashing, and what it looks like to buy in alignment with your values when resources are limited
• A sneak peek at Kathleen's Wardrobe Values Quiz, launching soon on the Allegory Styling website

About Aislynn Patrick Aislynn Patrick is the co-host of Rivers in the Desert, a podcast about faith and the environment, alongside Beatrice May Shackelford. She works in ministry and is passionate about bringing the hope of the gospel to conversations about climate change and environmental stewardship.

🎙️ Find Rivers in the Desert [link]

Resources Mentioned

• Rivers in the Desert Podcast — [link]
• Merlin Bird ID App (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) — [link]
• Isaiah 43 — the scripture behind the podcast name is Isaiah 43:19
• Revelation passage: Revelation 11:18
• Wardrobe Values Quiz — [link]
• Kathleen's appearance on Rivers in the Desert — [link]

Connect with Kathleen

• Allegory Styling: allegorystyling.com
• Styled Clean Podcast: [link]
• Instagram: [Instagram]

The Hidden Story in What You Wear is a podcast about style, sustainability, identity, and the deeper meaning behind the clothes we choose every day. Hosted by Kathleen Audet, each episode explores how fashion can become more than trends or consumption — it can become a reflection of our values, beliefs, memories, and sense of self.

Through thoughtful solo episodes and meaningful conversations, Kathleen unpacks the connection between personal style, ethical fashion, storytelling, and intentional living. If you’ve ever felt like getting dressed is about more than just looking good, this podcast will help you discover the hidden story your wardrobe is already telling.

What if your wardrobe and your dinner plate are telling the same story?

This week Kathleen sits down with Joel Salatin — farmer, author, provocateur, and co-owner of Polyface Farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley — to ask a question the fashion industry hasn't thought to ask a regenerative farmer: what does soil health have to do with what we wear?

The answer turns out to be everything.

Joel and Kathleen cover a lot of ground in this conversation (pun intended) — from the philosophy of minimalism to the theology of dualism, from Australian merino microns to the cobbler who could make shoes that last a lifetime. But underneath all of it runs a single conviction: there is no part of life outside the interests of God, including what hangs in your closet.

In this episode:

• Why Joel asks people to "look through their plate" — and why the same question applies to your wardrobe
• The Western dualism problem: how St. Augustine's body/spirit split quietly shaped how we think (and don't think) about consumption
• Why the faith community threw the baby out with the bathwater on environmental stewardship
• The difference between worrying about clothes and thinking about them — and why it matters
• How fast fashion got its start on the runway in the 1860s and where it ends up today (hint: Uganda)
• Australian wool, merino microns, and why quality fiber is worth every penny
• What true wealth looks like on a farm — and why it might apply to your closet too

This week's thread to follow: Pick three pieces from your closet and read the fiber labels. Ask yourself what those fibers required — what soil, what chemicals, what labor. Stewardship starts with attention.

About Joel Salatin: Joel is the co-owner of Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia, and the author of 16 books on regenerative agriculture. He's been featured in Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and the documentary Food, Inc.Learn more at polyfacefarms.com.

What does it mean to truly belong to the earth — and how does that change the way we live, consume, and create? In this episode of Style Clean, Kathleen sits down with Forrest Inslee, longtime leader at Circlewood, a faith-based nonprofit dedicated to helping churches and communities develop greener faith practices and a theology that puts creation care at the center. Forrest hosts the Earth Keepers Podcast and teaches at the Seminary of the Wild Earth. Together, they explore how a "rewilded heart" can transform our daily choices — including the clothes we buy — and why reconnecting to the land isn't just good environmentalism, it's a spiritual practice.

Guest: Forrest Inslee — leader at Circlewood, host of the Earth Keepers Podcast, and professor of community development with a focus on creation care and faith.

In This Episode:

• How Circlewood serves diverse church communities in developing creation care practices and a holistic theology
• Rachel's story: rescuing earthworms as a profound spiritual practice — and what it reveals about our disconnection from the natural world
• The concept of "paying attention to story" — learning the human, ecological, Indigenous, and cultural history of the place you live
• Why lasting change starts with your why — rooting practical eco-decisions in a clear internal value system
• The "rewilded heart": letting your inner transformation guide sustainable choices rather than trying to do everything at once
• Resistance to creation care — both cultural and internal — and why community is the key to moving through it
• The evangelical church's history of anthropocentrism and how Forrest worked his way toward a more creation-centered spirituality
• The Celtic Christian tradition's "two books of revelation": scripture and nature
• How the legacy of missions-focused community development often ignores environmental impact — and why that needs to change
• Indigenous wisdom, decolonization of worldview, and learning from communities with more grace for slow, steady change
• Practical first steps: go outside, plant a tomato, form a relationship with a spring — and let that be the bridge

Resources Mentioned:

• Earth Keepers Podcast —
• Ecological Disciple — Circlewood's online journal
• Christine Sine's Substack: Walking in Wonder
• Randy Woodley's books and Substack
• Arocha USA — Churches of Restoration program
• People Plant with Purpose — TEN curriculum (free for churches)
• The Wild Church movement (co-founded by Victoria Lourdes)
• Eileen Fisher — sustainable fashion design

Themes: Creation care • Faith & sustainability • Rewilded heart • Slow living • Ethical consumption • Spiritual practice • Indigenous wisdom • Fashion & the earth

What if what you wear could either harm or heal the world?

In this episode of Styled Clean: From Toxins to Truth, One Thread at a Time, I sit down with Avery Davis Lamb, Executive Director of Creation Justice Ministries for a thoughtful and eye-opening conversation about creation care and the clothes we wear every single day. What does our faith have to do with our closets? And how can small, intentional choices in what we buy and wear reflect a deeper care for people and the planet?

Avery brings both wisdom and practicality to this conversation, helping us rethink fast fashion, stewardship, and the impact of our everyday habits. We talk about what creation care really means, how clothing connects to bigger global and ethical issues, and simple shifts you can make without overwhelm.

If you’ve ever wondered how to align your values with your wardrobe—or how to take a more mindful approach to consumption—this episode will leave you inspired and equipped to take your next step.

What happens when science and faith feel like they’re telling two different stories?

In this episode, I’m joined by marine biologist and author Rachel G. Jordan to explore the intersection of faith, science, and the natural world. Rachel shares her journey of growing up in a Christian home, pursuing science, and wrestling with big questions about creation, evolution, and truth.

If you’ve ever felt tension between what you believe and what you’re learning, this conversation will encourage you to lean into curiosity without fear. Rachel brings both scientific insight and deep faith to the table, reminding us that truth doesn’t have to be divided—it can be discovered.

We also dive into her work with coral reefs, her passion for marine life, and how it all connects in ways you might not expect—even to fashion.