In a dusty alley in the heart of Kenya’s largest open-air market, models strut down a makeshift catwalk in daring recycled outfits made from garbage collected from landfills and market scraps, proof that even trash can dazzle.
Every year, thousands of tons of used clothing from Europe, the United States and elsewhere arrive in Kenya.
In 2023, Kenya will overtake Nigeria to become Africa’s largest importer of second-hand clothing, according to a study by the US-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Thousands of these bales arrive at Gikomba market near downtown Nairobi, where tin-roofed stalls stretch across a five-acre labyrinth, one of the city’s main economic centers.
On a sunny afternoon last week, a large crowd gathered to watch the models move and spin, displaying pieces of bales once discarded as unusable or unsellable.
“What? They’ve improved our clothes,” said one of the merchants delightedly as he watched the spectacle.
Gikomba Runway Edition brought together for the first time young Kenyan underground designers and stylists, including 25-year-old “upcycling” specialist Morgan Azedy.
“I always see the environment around me as dirty… I wanted to control the pollution,” he said. AFP while preparing her avant-garde outfits in her one-room house before the show.
Her “Kenyan Raw” collection featured urban denim and a gothic style made entirely from recycled leather sourced from landfills and fashion waste.
‘Just rubbish’
Kenya imported around 197,000 tonnes of second-hand clothing worth $298 million in 2023, according to the MIT study.
Environment for Development, a global research network, estimates that about a third are unusable items that end up in landfills, mostly made of plastic materials such as nylon and polyester that do not biodegrade.
Olwande Akoth, a designer who displays her recycled kimonos at the fashion show, once traded secondhand bales, but was often discouraged by their poor quality.
“It’s just trash… clothes you can’t even wear, you wouldn’t even give to a beggar,” Akoth said.
The influx of second-hand clothing has employed hundreds of thousands of people across East Africa, from dock workers to traders, and provided plenty of affordable clothing.
But it has also made it difficult for national textile companies to take off.
The East African Community, made up of eight countries in the region, attempted to impose a ban in 2016 in hopes of boosting local textile production.
But recycling lobbyists in the United States objected, and Washington threatened to kick East African nations out of a lucrative trade deal called the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) that allowed them to sell goods duty-free in the United States.
Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and others retreated. Only Rwanda stood firm and was punished by suspending the sale of clothing under AGOA’s preferential rates.
President Donald Trump’s administration allowed AGOA to expire last month for the entire continent, although talks are underway to revive it.
‘Uniqueness’
For Azedy, the downside of trade deals – mountains of discarded clothing piled up in landfills – is a treasure trove for his creative eye.
Buying new fabric, he said, is simply “too expensive.”
On the runway, what was once an oversized pair of jeans has been transformed into a tiered layered jacket paired with flared pants and platform shoes.
Her search for “uniqueness” in repurposed pieces earned her a spot at Berlin Fashion Week last year.
Having styled several regional musicians with his collection, Azedy now dreams of bringing what others consider trash to the big stages of New York and Paris.
