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Russian Clothing Brands Plug Gap Left by Western Rivals 

A seamstress works on a piece of Russian brand "Closer" at a sewing workshop in Moscow, Russia April 20, 2023. (Reuters)
A seamstress works on a piece of Russian brand "Closer" at a sewing workshop in Moscow, Russia April 20, 2023. (Reuters)
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Russian Clothing Brands Plug Gap Left by Western Rivals 

A seamstress works on a piece of Russian brand "Closer" at a sewing workshop in Moscow, Russia April 20, 2023. (Reuters)
A seamstress works on a piece of Russian brand "Closer" at a sewing workshop in Moscow, Russia April 20, 2023. (Reuters)

Russian designers and brands are helping the retail sector gradually recover from a turbulent 15 months of store closures and slumping demand, with new labels plugging the gap left by foreign rivals and shoppers tentatively returning.

Hundreds of foreign retailers shut up shop in response to Russia dispatching troops to Ukraine in February 2022, leaving some of Moscow's most prestigious streets with boarded up stores and the industry reeling from a roughly $2.5 billion hit.

Spain's Inditex flagship Zara store in central Moscow, which sat idle for over a year, last month reopened under new management and a new brand, MAAG, leaving customers largely satisfied.

"It looks like nothing has changed since you-know-who was here," Moscow resident Anton told Reuters outside the store.

Fellow Muscovite Antonina said: "I did not find any differences apart from the variety of choice. There's less of everything at the moment."

Money talking

Retail sales, a key gauge of consumer demand, slumped in 2022, hit by soaring inflation and falling wages, while the Western exodus contributed to heavy industry losses, said Oleg Klimov, the president of Russia's Council of Shopping Centers, with logistics and payment concerns taking months to resolve.

"People in general just did not understand what was going on," he told Reuters. "They did not want to spend money. The losses were about 200 billion roubles ($2.47 billion).

"But it is recovering now," he added. "Money always eventually changes hands."

Russians' access to Western products, such as McDonald's burgers and Levi's jeans - symbols of the kind of freedom capitalism could offer as the Soviet Union collapsed - is waning.

Gloria Jeans, once a re-seller of Levi's jeans, has taken over Swedish retailer H&M's central Moscow store.

And the West's shunning of Russia, along with export bans and punitive sanctions, complicates trading routes.

"The biggest problem is international transactions," said Ksenia Zhdanova, who runs her own KSEW clothing brand and is commercial director for online Russian designer wear marketplace Richmill.

"Our industry is extremely dependent on import."

Another problem is the shortage of staff, Zhdanova said, citing a lack of seamstresses and professionals in textiles that she believed only government-led initiatives could resolve.

Russians have developed solutions with small-scale imports and online sellers helping to keep foreign brands alive, but some things remain difficult to find.

Shopper Irina Nikulina said she did not miss foreign brands too much, except when needing something simple, like a reasonably priced white t-shirt.

Tatiana Vakhonina said she missed Swedish furniture giant IKEA and Zara the most.

"We go to Kazakhstan for shopping now," she said. "But some things cannot you buy at all anymore."

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Fashion

As Fast Fashion's Waste Pollutes Africa's Environment, Designers in Ghana are Finding a Solution

Attendees at a thrift and an upcycle show pose for a photograph in Accra, Ghana, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
Attendees at a thrift and an upcycle show pose for a photograph in Accra, Ghana, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
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As Fast Fashion's Waste Pollutes Africa's Environment, Designers in Ghana are Finding a Solution

Attendees at a thrift and an upcycle show pose for a photograph in Accra, Ghana, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
Attendees at a thrift and an upcycle show pose for a photograph in Accra, Ghana, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)

In a sprawling secondhand clothing market in Ghana’s capital, early morning shoppers jostle as they search through piles of garments, eager to pluck a bargain or a designer find from the stalls selling used and low-quality apparel imported from the West.
At the other end of the street, an upcycled fashion and thrifting festival unfolds with glamour and glitz, The Associated Press reported. Models parade along a makeshift runway in outfits that designers created out of discarded materials from the Kantamanto market, ranging from floral blouses and denim jeans to leather bags, caps and socks.
The festival is called Obroni Wawu October, using a phrase that in the local Akan language means “dead white man’s clothes.” Organizers see the event as a small way to disrupt a destructive cycle that has made Western overconsumption into an environmental problem in Africa, where some of the worn-out clothes end up in waterways and garbage dumps.
“Instead of allowing (textile waste) to choke our gutters or beaches or landfills, I decided to use it to create something ... for us to use again,” said Richard Asante Palmer, one of the designers at the annual festival organized by the Or Foundation, a nonprofit that works at the intersection of environmental justice and fashion development.
Ghana is one of Africa's leading importers of used clothing. It also ships some of what it gets from the United Kingdom, Canada, China and elsewhere to other West African nations, the United States and the UK, according to the Ghana Used Clothing Dealers Association.
Some of the imported clothes arrive in such poor shape, however, that vendors dispose of them to make room for the next shipments. On average, 40% of the millions of garments exported weekly to Ghana end up as waste, according to Neesha-Ann Longdon, the business manager for the Or Foundation’s executive director.
The clothing dealers association, in a report published earlier this year on the socioeconomic and environmental impact of the nation’s secondhand clothing trade, cited a much lower estimate, saying only 5% of the items that reach Ghana in bulk are thrown out because they cannot be sold or reused.
In many African countries, citizens typically buy preowned clothes — as well as used cars, phones and other necessities — because they cost less than new ones. Secondhand shopping also gives them a chance to score designer goods that most people in the region can only dream of.
But neither Ghana's fast-growing population of 34 million people nor its overtaxed infrastructure is equipped to absorb the amount of cast-off attire entering the country. Mounds of textile waste litter beaches across the capital, Accra, and the lagoon which serves as the main outlet through which the city’s major drainage channels empty into the Gulf of Guinea.
“Fast fashion has taken over as the dominant mode of production, which is characterized here as higher volumes of lower-quality goods,” Longdon said.
Jonathan Abbey, a fisherman in the area, said his nets often capture textile waste from the sea. Unsold used clothes “aren’t even burned but are thrown into the Korle Lagoon, which then goes into the sea,” Abbey said.
The ease of online shopping has sped up this waste cycle, according to Andrew Brooks, a King’s College London researcher and the author of “Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-hand Clothes.”
In countries like the UK, unwanted purchases often end up as charity donations, but clothes are sometimes stolen from street donation bins and exported to places where the consumer demand is perceived to be higher, Brooks said. Authorities rarely investigate such theft because the clothes are "seen as low-value items,” he said.
Donors, meanwhile, think their castoffs are “going to be recycled rather than reused, or given away rather than sold, or sold in the UK rather than exported overseas,” Brooks said.
The volume of secondhand clothing sent to Africa has led to complaints of the continent being used as a dumping ground. In 2018, Rwanda raised tariffs on such imports in defiance of US pressure, citing concerns the West's refuse undermined efforts to strengthen the domestic textile industry. Last year, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said he would ban imports of clothing “from dead people.”
Trade restrictions might not go far in either reducing textile pollution or encouraging clothing production in Africa, where profits are low and incentives for designers are few, experts say.
In the absence of adequate measures to stop the pollution, organizations like the Or Foundation are trying to make a difference by rallying young people and fashion creators to find a good use for scrapped materials.
Ghana's beaches had hardly any discarded clothes on them before the country's waste management problems worsened in recent years, foundation co-founder Allison Bartella said.
“Fast forward to today, 2024, there are mountains of textile waste on the beaches,” she said.