Fashion & lifestyle

How the impact of fashion reshapes cities and landscapes. From wastefulness to research

This past Sunday, we explored the Inequalities exhibition at Triennale Milano. The 24th International Exhibition tackles one of today’s most pressing issues: the dramatic rise of global inequality. Moving beyond observation, it questions the disparities that shape our existence—economic, ethnic, geographic, and gender-based. And this through powerful installations and events. The project aims to map these complex dynamics and spotlight political ideas for a future where difference becomes a strength, recomposed into vibrant new communities.

As articulated by President Stefano Boeri, the exhibition delves into how “immense wealth is now concentrated in the hands of a few. And how, for millions around the world, being born into poverty has become an irreversible fate.” It  also reveals how inequality, “whether inherited at birth, encountered along the way, or shaped by our own actions—impacts life expectancy and health for each of us.” Clearly, it encompasses its most extreme manifestations, from ghettos to wars.

The exhibition frames this complex subject through two distinct lenses: the geopolitics and the biopolitics of inequality.

Inequalities & waste crisis: Your wardrobe is a colonizer

On the ground floor, the focus turns to the geopolitical scale, particularly the world of cities. This section examines the contemporary definitions of “wealth” and “poverty” and the significant roles they play in shaping urban environments. Among the international participants, Togo contributed a striking installation: Out of Fashion, the Waste Lab. Its central, provocative thesis: Your wardrobe is a colonizer. It links the fashion industry’s waste directly to the dynamics of modern-day waste colonialism.

Each year, the fashion industry generates 92 million tons of textile waste. Much of which is exported from the Global North to the Global South. In Africa, this “waste colonialism” exacerbates environmental degradation and social injustice, profoundly impacting landscapes and cities. 

The installation Out of Fashion explores the injustices and environmental problems caused by this specific form of waste colonialism.

Using Togo as a case study, the work examines how this fashion excess is reshaping urban environments, focusing on the Hedzranawoe market in Lomé. As a hub for discarded clothing in West Africa, the market has become a microcosm of the informal economies and innovative design practices generated by the global waste crisis. Here, clothing is sold, altered, or transformed into new objects—such as sunscreens made from denim scraps. Thse practices demonstrate a resilient culture of reuse and adaptation.

Culminating in a display built from the very waste it critiques—textile waste from the market—Out of Fashion reframes the narrative. It doesn’t stop at exposing injustice but embodies the principles of regenerative design it advocates. By showcasing the creativity born from necessity in Lomé, it lights a path forward, proving that the shift from wasteful consumption to exploratory creation is not only possible but already underway.

Final thoughts

With Inequalities, the Triennale doesn’t claim to exhaust the subject but acts as a catalyst for thought and potential solutions. The installation Out of Fashion encapsulates this dual mission. Crafted from the waste it denounces, it exposes a deeply unequal system while revealing the creativity that emerges in response. It reminds us that the inequalities we inherit or encounter can also be transformed—into advantages, into gifts, into added value for our future communities.

Grassroots activists taking to the sea in a nonviolent act of defiance

In a moment marked more by grim news than hope, support for the Global Sumud Flotilla from leading international voices such as Dr. Gabor Maté and Professor Alessandro Barbero arrives not as mere endorsement, but as a vital affirmation of our shared humanity. It is a solidarity that strengthens the resolve to challenge the siege of Gaza, fueling a determined hope that this grassroots mission can help pave a way towards justice.

Global Sumud Flotilla: What is it, and what’s the goal?

This is a grassroots movement that brings people together for global solidarity actions to support Gaza and end the siege. It was previously called the Global March to Gaza.
“We are a coalition of everyday people: organizers, humanitarians, doctors, artists, clergy, lawyers, and seafarers who believe in human dignity and the power of nonviolent action.”

People from the Maghreb Sumud Flotilla, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the Global Movement to Gaza, and the Sumud Nusantara have come together with one goal: to break the illegal siege on Gaza by sea, open a humanitarian corridor, and help end the suffering of the Palestinian people.

The genocide in Gaza

Some people deny the crisis or claim that life in Gaza is fine and there is no food problem. In fact, Israelis are even paying influencers to portray a reality of normal life in Gaza. But the facts are clear. For the first time, two of Israel’s leading human rights groups, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, have called it what it is: genocide.

Israel is deliberately starving Palestinians and using famine as a weapon of mass destruction.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), UNICEF, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have collectively and consistently highlighted the extreme urgency for an immediate and full-scale humanitarian response given the escalating hunger-related deaths, rapidly worsening levels of acute malnutrition and plummeting levels of food consumption, with hundreds of thousands of people going days without anything to eat. (via WHO).

The agencies stressed that famine must be stopped at all costs. 

Furthermore, an intensified military offensive in Gaza City or any escalation in the conflict would have even more devastating effects on civilians, especially where famine is already present. Many people, including sick and malnourished children, older adults, and people with disabilities, may not be able to leave.

What can you do?

As Albert Einstein warned,

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”

During the Nazi era, information was suppressed and inaccessible in a way that is almost unimaginable today. Now, we are without excuse. We cannot claim we did not know.

This is why the Global Sumud Flotilla exists.

On August 31st from Spain, and September 4th from Tunisia, a coalition of the conscience will make history. Dozens of boats—large and small—will set sail, converging on Gaza in the largest coordinated civilian flotilla ever assembled. It is a direct, nonviolent challenge to the siege, a mission of visible solidarity.

They are sailing to break the blockade. Here’s how you can help them succeed

#FromEveryRiverToEverySea