Clothes, poverty, and the global economy

Abstract

A photographer for National Geographic told me about fighting with the picture editors when he returned from an assignment in rural Africa. They wanted images of Africans in “traditional native dress,” but in his pictures, people were wearing western castoffs, such as worn-out rock concert t-shirts. I've seen the same thing, such as an elder of the Karamoja tribe in the wild Northeast corner of Uganda attending a tribal rain ceremony wearing nothing but a woman's tweed, oatmeal-colored winter overcoat that I'll bet was worn previously by an elderly woman in Chicago. Clothes travel and the journey tells a compelling story about the global economy. From the sweatshops of the developing world, shirts, jackets, trousers, and skirts make their way to the shelves at Walmart and even the boutiques of Fifth Avenue and Rodeo Drive. After they are worn out or unfashionable, we dump them in thrift shops for a tax writeoff and, finally, the cycle is completed when the residue that no one in America wants is sold by the ton and shipped to the rural markets of Africa. Clothes are an emblem of the westernization of the world and the reach, power, and inequity of the global economy.