By Francis Kokoroko and Cooper Inveen
ACCRA, Dec 28 (Reuters) – As the sun set on a courtyard
of shipping containers in Ghana’s capital Accra, young men and
women in Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead and tie-dye tees bartered
over army surplus jackets and Adidas sneakers while a live
deejay spun Afrobeat classics.
The Vintage Gala, as 23-year old founders Prince Quist and
James Edem Doe Dartey dubbed it, brought together a movement of
young vintage enthusiasts pushing back against the global fast
fashion industry by encouraging their peers to shop secondhand.
“If you wear clothes that were made back in the day…you’re
helping the environment by not using the raw materials and other
things needed to make new ones,” Quist said, seated in front of
the booth for his and Dartey’s online shop, TT Vintage Store.
“The idea is just to inspire everybody to thrift vintage,
because secondhand goods aren’t second class stuff,” Dartey
added. “Shopping vintage makes recycling even better.”
Ghana receives around 15 million items of used clothing each
week from Western countries and China, offloaded in bulk, often
at negligible prices and questionable quality. Around 40% of
this ultimately ends up in massive urban landfills, according to
the U.S. based Or Foundation.
Much of it passes through Accra’s Kantamanto, one of the
largest garment markets on the continent, where bales of used
clothes are sold based on the expected quality of the garments
wrapped up inside.
Hours before sunrise several times per week, vintage
enthusiasts like Quist and Dartey comb through Kantamanto’s
rivers of imported clothes, searching for gems they can resell
on Instagram pages with thousands of followers in Ghana and
abroad.
They believe buying secondhand not only helps to reduce
fashion’s environmental impact, but also allows them and their
customers to express unique styles apart from current trends.
Their message is simple: buy secondhand, make a difference.
“Remove the whole notion that you only wear vintage when you
are poor, or you only wear thrifted stuff when you don’t have
money,” said creative Myra Davis outside the Vintage Gala event.
“It’s been here for years,” she said. “Why go and produce
more when there’s more than enough available to you?”
(Reporting by Francis Kokoroko and Cooper Inveen
Editing by Peter Graff)
((cooper.inveen@thomsonreuters.com; +221 78 546 9850;))
Keywords: GHANA CLOTHING/ (TV, PIX)
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