It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strange Champs. Today, wearing it on your sleeve,

why fashion matters. So Jack, I have to ask, what are you wearing?

I am wearing a black, boiled wool, Cossack coat from the 1950s. It has a capelet. And this piece was actually a gift to me from my colleague, my NPR colleague, Grenay Montaigne.

You might recognize that voice. It's Jackie Leiden, long-time foreign correspondent and host on NPR.

But lately, she's switched from covering distant wars to creating her own startup,

an independent podcast about fashion. It's called The Seams. Some of the segments have already

aired on NPR. So Jackie, why create a whole new program about fashion? Well, I had to do something.

So there was that.

There was that little bit of impetus.

But we had actually started the seams last year.

And here, Anne, is the biggest reason.

I felt that in my years as a journalist here,

I remember saying to one of my young colleagues,

what do I do next? Because I had hosted a lot of shows. I'd done a

jillion stories. And my young colleague said, Jackie, you should cover fashion. And I said, yes,

but not hemlines and trends and seasons. Vogue can do that and does it really well, along with

many other outlets. What we need to do is connect the anthropology of fashion to public radio audiences to basically

people who had questions that involve historical context or the significance or the memory of clothing.

This tiny rural workshop represents one thread of the supply chain that loops from Mexico's

plains, mountains, to catwalks, from Tokyo to Amsterdam.

I've been brought to this back alley in Tenancingo, two hours from Mexico City by one of the

country's leading designers, Carla Fernandez.

...