The Or Foundation

FIFA World Cup. Wimbledon. The Tour de France. The Amundi Evian Championship. Whatever your summer sport of choice, you don’t need to play to participate.

Our remanufactured sportswear edit launches today at Alterist Marketplace, London (Alterist | Upcycled Fashion).

Each one-of-a-kind piece was designed and remanufactured by The Or Foundation’s Remanufacturing Lead, Nabi Yankey (Nabi-Yankey), made from secondhand sportswear pieces sourced from Kantamanto Market.

Reimagined for what comes next. One of one. No repeats.

Shop the collection at Alterist.

Credits:

Photographer & Editor: Ibn Faiz ((ابن فايز)
Talents: Camelia Ardestani (Camelia) Monet Cassett () and Eugene Ewusi-Annan (.wusii
Production Team: Sammy Oteng (Sammy Oteng) Nabi Fred Yankey (Nabi-Yankey)
Production Support: Derrick Asare (Jhay Roy), Darren Simpson
Creative Director: Eugene Ewusi-Annan (.wusii)

FIFA World Cup. Wimbledon. The Tour de France. The Amundi Evian Championship. Whatever your summer sport of choice, you don’t need to play to participate.

Our remanufactured sportswear edit launches today at Alterist Marketplace, London (Alterist | Upcycled Fashion).

Each one-of-a-kind piece was designed and remanufactured by The Or Foundation’s Remanufacturing Lead, Nabi Yankey (Nabi-Yankey), made from secondhand sportswear pieces sourced from Kantamanto Market.

Reimagined for what comes next. One of one. No repeats.

Shop the collection at Alterist.

Credits:

Photographer & Editor: Ibn Faiz
Talents: Camelia Ardestani, Monet Cassett, Eugene Ewusi-Annan
Production Team: Sammy Oteng (Sammy Oteng) Nabi Fred Yankey (Nabi-Yankey)
Production Support: Derrick Asare (Jhay Roy), Darren Simpson
Creative Director: Eugene Ewusi-Annan (.wusii)

Closing out World Ocean Month with a celebration of ecological care, creativity and community.

On June 30, The Or Foundation with Tide Turners, in partnership with the Norwegian Embassy in Ghana, invites you to a one-of-a-kind coastal experience in what was once Dutch Accra.

Through environmental remediation, immersive installations, live acrobatics and a special musical performance by Iveth Stunner, we will reimagine what care for our shoreline can look like.

At the center of the experience is Portraits From the Future: The Faces Carrying the Shore; an exhibition spotlighting the cleanup crews, artists, citizen scientists and documentarians behind The Or Foundation’s growing Community Ecological Care Network (CECN) in Accra, who are building new systems of ecological care from the ground up.

The day concludes with a raffle featuring limited-edition upcycled pieces from our Other Showroom space.

We promise you’ve never seen anything like this.

Welcome to the future.

We made these upcycled flags with windbreakers lovingly sourced from Kantamanto Market!

Each one is unique, with prices starting at 300 Ghana cedis. Limited quantities are available now at Other Showroom
Drop by 10am-5pm, in Adabraka!

At Woven Threads VII: CRAFTED, our Fibreboard was the perfect backdrop for the fashion showcase.

Developed by The Or Foundation’s Material Technology & Transformation Lab team from shredded cotton-rich asire T-shirts diverted from Kantamanto, the panels formed a backdrop for conversations, and encounters throughout the exhibition.

What began as discarded material was transformed into structure, creating a space where designers, makers, and visitors could engage with ideas around craft, sustainability, circularity, and value.

For us, the Fibreboard represents more than material innovation. It reflects the possibilities that emerge when waste is approached not as an endpoint, but as a resource for experimentation, creativity, innovation and new systems of making.

Thank you to , Style House Files, curator Sunny Birungi Dolat, and the designers and practitioners whose work activated the space and brought Woven Threads VII: CRAFTED to life.

From Kantamanto, to Lagos and to the world, the conversation continues.

Featured designer’s work photographs behind our Casa Fibreboard:

Éki Kéré
NYA
Kokrobitey Institute
AJANÉÉ
Hertunba by Florentina
PETTRE TAYLOR

Images courtesy of Lagos Fashion Week Official and Style House Files.

Looking back on the closing ceremony of the EU Cycling Tour for Sustainability in Accra, we’re proud to have contributed a sustainability fashion showcase that brought our work in Kantamanto Market to the runway.

Building on for the six-day circling journey across Ghana, the presentation highlighted our ongoing work and showcased reuse, circularity, and community-led systems in practice. The collection of 12 looks was reimagined, developed, and brought to life in just one week: sport-inspired pieces rooted in reuse and drawing from the realities and materials from Kantamanto, led by Fred Nabi Yankey, our Remanufacturing Lead.

What came to life on the runway was not just the fashion, but the process: hands, time, care, and collaboration, moving so quickly, but with intention. The showcase distilled the essence of our approach: material transformation, collective making, and storytelling through garments.

Thank you to the EU delegation, partners, team and all collaborators who made this moment possible.

To the models, who carried these pieces with presence and power, and to every person behind the scenes who brought this to life under such a tight timeline, thank you.

And to the community that continues to shape this work we do every day, this moment belongs to you.

Last Friday, we welcomed MP for Clapham & Brixton Hill, for a tour of our facilities and projects across both our Adabraka offices and the Material Technology and Transformation Lab.

The visit began in , our ground floor gallery and retail space featuring upcycled designs by and – two women led cooperatives – before moving upstairs to our Microfiber Lab, where we are analyzing samples for microfibres and microplastics, and our Remanufactory, where upcyclers are producing re-made-in-Ghana products including uniforms.

Across the market at the MTTL, Bell got hands-on in Cassaboard production and visited our Tarn production area, where apprentices produce t-shirt yarn for Kuoro Earth and Dinnani’s crocheted and woven pieces.

Executives from the joined in presenting the MP with Woven Cloth created using t-shirt yarn created by The Or Foundation and woven in partnership with in addition to a Ghanaian flag that was re-made in Ghana at The Or Foundation’s Remanufactory, and a signature “Made In Kanta” tote by

“Najiha Yahaya has a wide smile, a creative impulse so strong that she taught herself to crochet without the help of a smartphone or YouTube, and the kind of courage that allows her to stand before powerful men and defy them to their faces. But if you had met her when she first arrived in Accra alone at 15 and began working as a head porter, or kayayo, carrying heavy bales of secondhand clothing on her head, you might not have seen any of that…”

In her recent story for author Whitney Bauck highlights the realities of the global fashion system where excess clothing becomes an unimaginable burden for women who head-carry bales of secondhand clothing in Kantamanto.

She explores how our team is working alongside these women to implement immediate and long term solutions including our paid apprenticeship & scholarship program that has accompanied over 290 women out of dangerous head carrying.

It’s a beautiful story that amplifies the essential voices of women like Najiha and Huzeima .huzeima while demonstrating the power of solidarity through women like whose generosity created the foundation on which our Mabilgu Program is built.

Please read the story in full at Atmos.earth

Photos by featuring and

From Kantamanto to Lagos Fashion Week, Woven Threads VII: CRAFTED, we took not just a presentation, but a collective, shaped through material, process, and people.

What begins in Kantamanto, where many second-hand garments and materials are discarded, continues in the hands of a growing community of designers and practitioners who rework them into identity, memory, labour, resistance, and possibility.

From reclaimed textiles to weaving, dyeing, crochet, and material experimentation, each practice offers a different way of engaging with what already exists, not as waste, but as a resource.

At this year’s presentation, The Or Foundation brought together designers and makers working across upcycling, circular design, and craft, carrying their practices from the market to our studio, to the Woven Threads stage.

We hold space for all the designers and practitioners whose work shaped this moment, and for the wider Kantamanto community whose daily labour, skill, and knowledge make it possible. Alongside a wider community of craftsmen, tailors, and seamstresses within Kantamanto, each exploring new ways of making through reclaimed materials.

Nakoi - Rebecca Korkor Mensah , Daily Dosage - Emmanuel Tetteh , Mabilgu (The Or Foundation) , Emie Atelier - Apladey Theresah Emefah .atelier, Morhands - Rabi Kudomor , Damtse - Glady Damtse , Humble - Harris Kharin Bennah, Martinson Klothing - Martinson Afari , Master Hanga - Samuel Gyasi .garment
StreetNotSafe - Joshua Baah , KOMA ARC - Derrick Asare , Apprica’s Toggery - Erica Appiah Amankwah , A Bite of Memory - Glory Adom Unique , House of Dsmith - Merilyn Smoth Dodzi Gladys , and Winneba Waivers - Project Justine

This was a collective practice. A different way of making. A different way of seeing. A different way of valuing. Because textile transformation does not begin with the garment. It begins with people.