Fashion in Rwanda

Do you ever wonder where your clothes go after you donate them to Goodwill?  A good portion of it goes to developing countries like Rwanda!  The clothes are sold at extremely discounted prices.  Toms shoes may go for $5. I once found some Birkenstocks for $10.  Free tshirts, such as from Relay for Life, also are commonly purchased. I’m always on the look out for Virginia Tech shirts, although the wearer usually doesn’t even know what VT is. But who actually gets that money? The thrift store is getting free merchandise and selling it to very poor people to be sold again to even poorer people.

But my discomfort with this concept goes past that.  In addition to second hand clothing, Rwanda’s fashion scene is made of custom tailored pieces.  You can go to market and pick out your favorite patterned fabric at a cost of about $3/yard. You haggle as much as you dare with the seller (I always feel somewhat guilty arguing over 75 cents with a woman who has no electricity in her home so I tend to get ripped off a lot).   Then you bring it to your favorite tailor (who may also be the fabric seller) and have a dress/skirt/shirt/pants made to your specifications for another $5. 

Do you see a problem here?  The high quality, local clothes may cost about $10 with most of that money going straight to the locals, but you can get a ‘cool’ foreign branded piece for $5 with most of the profit going to…who knows?  These donations are not so good for the Rwandan economy! It is interesting to note that the more stylish among us may prefer second hand clothing to any other option. 

Once I arrived I realized I should have packed another sweater or sweatshirt because the evenings can get pretty cool here.  I went to a market in Kigali with a pretty good selection and I had wonderful visions of finding a high quality and fashionable garment with these features

-full length zipper

-no hood

-warm, but not hot

-fits me well

-professional enough to wear to work

I was envisioning something like these from Express.  But you really can’t be too picky when shopping here, I quickly realized. 

By the end I was pretty happy I found something that is relatively high quality without any weird spots or fading and was the right amount of warmth. Oddly, I was offered a lot of parks.  My final purchase fit two aspects (warm and full length zipper). The above are not my photos, I simply found it online here.  I ended up getting a Victoria Secret Pink Phi Beta hooded zip up jacket. I know nothing about this sorority and will likely not take it back to the US for that reason.  But for $6, I can’t really go wrong!