Waste Files: Afterlives of fashion’s excess in Johannesburg

Upcycling; the Depop craze; hand-me-downs; soiled toiles; somehow nylon is more expensive than cashmere; grandfather’s wedding suit but I added ribbons to it to partake in coquette core; is upcycling Marxist? excess is finite; more is more, so how can less be more commodified conscious consumption is still consumption; ethical consumption under capitalism (laughed out loud); recycle (boring); upcycle (art).

It’s inevitable to note the rise in scarcity for many, and excess for some, in the past decade. The Global North’s battle with reducing excess has meant a new kind of migration. This time, the colonial trade routes are not used to import rarities, but to export waste to the Global South. Out of this, the fashion industry’s generous share of discarded textiles is being shipped back to their places of origin.

Originally published in Dazed MENA Issue 01 | Order Here

The alarming impact of textile waste on the environment and climate change ranks it as the fourth most significant source of pressure resulting from European consumption. Europe generates approximately 5.8 million tonnes of textile waste annually, with synthetic fibres making up nearly two-thirds of this waste. While some textile waste is recycled within Europe, the majority is exported to Africa and Asia due to limited local recycling capabilities. In 2019, Africa received over 60% of EU textile waste as exports. Tainted, discarded, once loved items now find refuge in warehouses where they await their fate: the furnace or to be discovered by local artisans who will inject a new timeline to these abandoned, once-adorned objects of identity and self-expression.

Upcycling is a dialectic evoking two timelines simultaneously; through mending and transforming a totem of the past into an object of contemporary expression. Past and Future, Was and Will, weaved together to evoke sensory imaginations. The community working in the markets, from the designers to the tradesmen, imagine this dialectic fractal where decay is worthy of being cherished.

The backdrop is Johannesburg’s heart, the local markets that are home to all sorts of things, from aunties trading their finest silk and cotton spools to uncles selling an Ann Demeulemeester shirt without knowing that a fashion student in London once starved for two weeks to purchase it. It is a melting pot of oral histories, people, and their crafts. The material richness of these bazaars lies in the treasure chests hiding away in random shops. Someone’s rubbish may be another’s treasure. Johannesburg is a Pan-African city; it is like the bearing of a bicycle wheel, which serves as has defined so much of South Africa’s contemporary society. “The South African woman was the first ever punk,” he proclaims. Punk is alive and thriving; it always has in the Global South in the forms of food, carnivals and, of course, attire. In the context of South Africa, punk is a resilient thread that continues to stitch the post-apartheid community. Fashion and textiles are quite literally used as mediums of political expression to resist imposed colonial ideas of personhood. The South African woman drapes rebellion first, fabric second.

Masina amplifies a similar transitionary metamorphosis. “Woman to diva; waste to wonderland; scarcity to opulence” is what she wants for the young women of Jo’burg. Her process is one of heirlooms and heritage, and upcycling these looks has helped her discover parts of her own lost ethnographies. A grand reunion of material and the maternal.

Masina and Morojele’s process of upcycling involves a deep dive into local artisanal methods to offer these garments the longest possible second lives. Maybe reincarnation is more fun, anyway? From weaving together denim in order to achieve new forms to using strategic stitching methods passed down through generations, they preserve culture, one garment at a time. They preserve materiality through lineage. Their hands become holy, leaving traces of divinity and ancestral remnants onto these clothes conveniently marked as waste. They prescribe a new meaning to waste, a linguistic upheaval of the finite into an eternal timeline, all because they refuse to extract when so much around us demands a fresh start.

Not to throw young people in the Global North’s metropoles under the bus, but there lies a certain vitriol behind their attachment of aesthetics onto ‘upcycled’ garments. Urban ready-to-wear brands in the West appropriate the working-class experience to evoke a false sense of conscious consumption. ‘Vintage’ and ‘thrifted’ are now buzzwords ending up on moodboards to produce garments that look lived in. Brands now capitalise on these scarcity-driven fixes—details like safety pins, patches, or acid wash processes are flaunted on Parisian runways a foundation for all the spokes. Each spoke resembles multiple timelines and histories coalescing to push local cultures forward.

“Punk is alive and thriving; it always has in the Global South in the forms of food, carnivals and, of course, attire. In the context of South Africa, punk is a resilient thread that continues to stitch the post-apartheid community.”

After speaking with Johannesburg-based designers Khumo Morojele and Khanyi Masina on what upcycling means to them and why they consider it an integral part of their practices, they share a widely resonant sentiment many of us have experienced living in post-colonial ruins across the Global South: We don’t waste because to waste is to signal surplus. A surplus that has been extracted by the Global North for centuries. A surplus that knocks at our doorsteps in the forms of bales of waste. A surplus that caused scarcity. It is a zero-sum game.

Morojele narrated a story of this editorial embodying a Johannesburg woman; a woman who has traversed borders and timelines to find this market. She is militant in her identity; the garments upcycled resemble the anti-establishment uniforms from the anti-apartheid struggle, which under the guise of haute couture. They assign an urban meaning to these garments, which contrasts with their demographic’s material conditions rather significantly. It’s like they want to sell a story without a storyteller. It’s a false identity marker. It’s cheating.

Upcycling then becomes the sword that pierces the fashion bubble.

It forces the bubble to bleed out consumption and honour artisanal practices. Upcycling brings us closer to start looking at the materiality of objects under a magnifying glass; the polyester blends or overpriced nylon bags that some luxury labels have capitalised off are simply not it. It is a privilege to hold the worn coats and blazers of our grandparents, pieces made at home or by the local tailor. Let’s not rob future generations of their heirlooms.

Originally published in Dazed MENA Issue 01 | Order Here

Designers KHANYI MASINA and KHUMO MOROJELE, talent LOMBE KHOSA, producer ZANO NKOSI, production INTIMA STUDIOS, make-up artist SHAKIRAH SITHOLE, tailor MOSES, design assistant MPHO TSHAMASE, lighting assistant HLENGIWE LALA, camera assistant ALAIN KASSA, art assistants ENZO and THATO BOKOTE, production assistants NEO LEKHU and KGOSI MALEKA, runner LETHABO FOLOTSI