Rag riches

Kenya seeks solution to unwanted clothing

- Diego Menjíbar Reynés

Antony Njoroge paces back and forth, camera in hand, as people bombard him with questions. “What do we do with this? Where should I put it? The light's better over here!”

The filmmaker and his co-producer, Sally Ngoiri, are putting the final touches to an event that they never imagined would come to life when they thought up the idea in May: the first fashion show to be staged in Gikomba, Nairobi, east Africa's largest secondhand clothing market. “I’m never getting myself into something like this again,” Njoroge says, with a grin.

The Gikomba fashion show will feature in a documentary, Wasteland, which addresses the issue of mass importation of secondhand clothing - mitumba in Swahili - to Kenya but focuses on how stylists and designers are giving the garments a second life and redefining their uses.

“The idea comes from my personal experience as a citizen, seeing how my neighbourhood was getting dirtier. I saw how the Nairobi River often gets clogged with discarded clothes and plastic waste," says Ngoiri.