Fashion in Malawi

One of the aspects of Malawi that I find very interesting is the fashion. People here view clothes very differently than we do in America.  Looking "stylish" is definitely not a priority and people's philosophy seems to be "if it fits, wear it." Regardless of color, style, saying, or amount of holes. There are some who do put effort into looking nice. For example, the teachers at my school are always in collared, button down shirts with ties, and sometimes suit jackets, even in the 100+ degree weather. But for the most part, people don't care what they wear. 

All of the clothes here are second hand from America or Europe. In the major cities there are "clothes stores"- equivalent to a Goodwill or Salvation Army- but in the villages you buy clothes from the market, in piles or folded, on tarps on the ground. Since many of the clothes are from America it is not uncommon to see a Malawian walking around with a shirt that says "I ❤ New York" or "Red Sox". In my village in Kasungu I saw a women wearing a St. Augustine FL shirt! I was really excited and went up to he to explain that that is where I'm from. She was not as excited as me. To her it was just a shirt and she was just wearing it so she wouldn't be naked. 

I've seen girls wearing old princess Halloween costumes, women wearing used bridesmaid dresses, and men wearing pink leopard print pajama bottoms as everyday, casual outfits. The one fashion trend that does seem to exist here is Obama clothes. Malawians are pretty obsessed with Obama and his face, or his name, is on almost everything. Shirts, bags, belts, chitenjes, soap, gum etc. the quality of these products is not always great though, and sometimes his face is distorted or his name spelled wrong. 

The other issue I've noticed is that, since most of the shirts have English written on them, and most people here can't read English, people end up wearing shirts that are not appropriate for them. Either not appropriate for their age, their gender, or not appropriate in general. I often see boys wearing shirts that say things like: "princess" or "I'm a big sister!" or "proud grandma". Adults wear shirts for elementary school field days or other people's family reunions. And then there are the just plain inappropriate shirts. My neighbor in Kasungu once wore a shirt that said "I'm the guy you have to blow to get a drink around here". I thought about telling him that he shouldn't wear that, but really didn't want to explain what it meant. Recently I saw a young girl wear a shirt that announced "I have perfect breast a beautiful body so I realy don't need a asshole like you" (mistakes included). Again, skipped the English lesson for that one. And my favorite shirt I've seen so far was this one that I found at a market: