“Man Makes Clothes, Clothes Don’t Make Man”
Kantamanto and markets like it — created to boost financial stability for residents — are a solution to a layered problem, but this has now become a debt trap for many of its workers. Despite the strife sellers face, however, these markets have also become centers for creativity.
In one area of Kantamanto, for instance, the sound of sewing machines is just as loud as the chatter coming from dozens of people walking around. It’s here that vendors are making new pieces from discarded clothing, upcycling fast fashion into unique, well-crafted garments. One man, George, designs new shirts by stitching together the best parts of two polos. There are so many shirts to sell, and they are so popular, that as he happily shows me his designs, there is no time to talk.
A few steps away, Upcycle It Ghana, a stall run by a group of young Ghanaian designers, has a decidedly different feel than many of the other stalls. The lighting is dark with a blue hue, and the designers have set up wood shelving to display their upcycled denim creations. On the wall is a pair of black jeans with white stars sewn into the legs (I genuinely regret not buying them), next to three corduroy jackets featuring expertly stitched patches, reminiscent of something you’d find at the Bode store in New York’s Soho neighborhood.
Najiha, makes a placemat out of repurposed secondhand clothing. She is a paid apprentice in the Mabilgu Program, which offers job training, education, and wraparound support to women to foster alternative pathways for young women outside of dangerous headcarrying.Faiza Salman
Najiha, makes a placemat out of repurposed secondhand clothing. She is a paid apprentice in the Mabilgu Program, which offers job training, education, and wraparound support to women to foster alternative pathways for young women outside of dangerous headcarrying.Faiza Salman
Avido says his solution in Kibera was to start an annual fashion week in the area. He struggled with substance use and dropped out of school at 11 years old, but he found hope in fashion design. He feels that fashion can also be a solution to a problem that fashion itself has created. For Kibera’s fashion week, the runway is a lifted platform built on broken buses that were sent from London to Kenya, where they are unusable.
Designers often use pieces that are upcycled in their area, repurposing plastic and metal they have found into incredibly creative designs. “I try to help designers understand themselves, understand about financial literacy, understand what they want to achieve as human beings, as individuals, as artists,” Avido says. “What are their goals as designers? What do they want? Things like that. So you help them do that and make them understand how they can easily achieve this kind of thing.”
Najat, an apprentice in the Mabilgu Program, holding a handbag crocheted out of t-shirt scraps.Faiza Salman
In the Atacama Desert in Chile, young people have started to do similar things with clothing waste. Atacama Fashion Week sees young designers creating pieces from the garments in the desert and using the piles of additional waste as a runway backdrop. “My slogan is, ‘Man makes clothing, clothing doesn’t make man,’” Avido tells me. But he isn’t referring to style; he’s referring to the idea that both the problem and the solution will come from the people — and that’s going to require global input.
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