Words: Roshni Baillie
Recycling Recycling Revolution Revolution I have always been worried about the clothes that I pick up having a bad impact for the environment. The image of landfills full to the brim with £3.50 leggings and once trendy nylon jumpers that will never decompose haunts me every time I think about clicking the TikTok shop link to get a hoodie with a goose holding a knife in its mouth printed on it. I recently talked to the founder of Tanzania based Wakawear, a small and sustainable clothing company focussed on unique beachwear,about what upcycling means to herand the difference that she wants to make in the world of fashion. Q: How did you get into upcycling? A: Previously I didn’t know anything about upcycling. I mainly got interested when I was visiting Tanzania and visited what are called mitumba markets. Mitumba markets are basically the Swahili word for anything that comes from the global north second-hand and gets kind of distributed to markets around East Africa. I think there’s also markets in West Africa but I know less about them. So, it can mean materials, such as bedsheets, clothes, shoes, anything that someone could wear or drape, but it also includes electronics.
Lifestyle
It’s basically a way of other countries getting rid of their stuff [...] I realised that there was, a wealth of materials, loads and loads of different things, things that you wouldn’t expect, some vintage items, some really nice fabrics and, I got the idea to combine those with African prints. So that’s how it started. She told me about an article that she read about the movement of an average item of clothing before it gets on the shop floor. It’ll make its way through six countries, and, in some cases, it will have gone through that entire process before it gets to markets in East Africa. Q: What led you into this form of fashion as opposed to traditional designs with new fabrics? A: The same reason, I would say, but also the depths of fabrics is different. Not that you can’t get loads of different things new, and there’s some kind of really innovative new fabrics, like eucalyptus and bamboo that you get less in second hand markets, but what you also get is really old materials which you couldn’t get now. So, for that reason it’s quite exciting. You get to play with different textures, you get to practice a lot more because you’re not having to make multiple items of one thing, so there’s positives and negatives to that as well because unique items can only fit one person. Whereas if you’re building to scale, it’s a bit different. It’s a really goodstarting ground, I’d say.
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