“We feel there’s a kind of clothing dictatorship, coming from the global north to us,” said Kolade. “By sending things back, we are responding with a clear, proud message: we’re not just the dumping ground. We have the potential to produce, we have the potential to create.”
Kolade – who is half German, half Nigerian – spent 13 years working in luxury fashion in Europe, picking up a Vogue award for a collection crafted from a vegan, leather alternative known as bark cloth, sourced from Uganda.
He returned to Kampala – the Ugandan capital and the city where he grew up – hoping to work with home-grown cotton. Instead, he found that the once-thriving textile industry had been decimated by a new kind of colonialism. Like many African countries, Uganda had become a waste bin for the north’s clothing cast-offs.
Read more here https://www.positive.news/society/ugandan-designer-upcycles-british-cast-offs-and-returns-them-to-sender/