Jezebel
When you give your old clothes to the SalvA, there's a good chance they'll end up in another country, very often Haiti: of the 2.5 billion pounds of clothes donated in the U.S. each year, as much as 80% are shipped globally. Haiti’s thriving market in pepe — used items imported from abroad — and its vital role in that country's economy is the subject of the new documentary Secondhand (Pepe). Today's pepe market is a mix of above-board companies, freelancers and under-the-table dealers. Reason describes the city of Miragoane, which receives new pepe nearly every day from overseas, as “blanketed, literally, by a downy coat of secondhand clothing. It grows out of the ground and into the street, onto every surface, a sartorial network—buildings, barrows, man and machine-made structures, everywhere.” [Reason]
The Circle Of Lint
1:45 PM on Fri Jul 25 2008
By Sadie Stein
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