I have always secretly loved fashion. Once, during a comedy show I had audience members shout “FASHION! FASHION! THAT’S OUR PASSION!” while comics walked the aisle in different outfits and characters: an enormous pig, a power ranger, a scumbag landlord. It was all very silly, it wasn’t even serious enough to be considered standup comedy.

Years later, I still had a dream of one day being in a fashion show, though when I told people they’d laugh and think I was joking. Living across the street from Detroit’s top fashion designer from 2021-2025 I thought maybe my chance might come. At neighborhood gatherings I would subtly drop hints that if she had a show soon I’d be open to modelling.

That dream came true last spring when I got to be the winter coat model.

Is fashion serious or silly? The models on TV are often rail thin and wear grim expressions to match their bizarre haircuts and overly ambitious outfits. It seems kinda laughable, but everyone is taking it quite seriously. After all, fashion is our passion.

Last weekend I went to a sustainable fashion show benefitting a school for the deaf here in Blantyre. They had professional grim looking models, along with more cheerful students from the school walking the runway.

I was surprised that an event like this was even being put on, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of clothing shops or a high level of so-called “fashion” (in the Western sense) in town. Where exactly was all the material for their incredibly cool outfits coming from?

You’ve probably seen these dumpster looking bins outside of churches and libraries where you can donate clothes by the trash bag. Apparently those end up on the other side of the world, where the contents are worn by unaware locals.

In Blantyre you’ll see loads of quasi-familiar discarded clothes: gear from a Detroit-area cross country team we competed against in high school, “Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl LVII Champions” (they lost that year), Buffalo Bills shirts on every corner (they lose every year).

Here is the final resting place of our stuff when we clear space to make space for more. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, our discarded clothes end up in rural African townships. Piles of clothes for people to purchase and wear.

When we Americans grow bored with our attire and no longer find it beautiful we send it away. But we feel too guilty throwing still wearable clothes out, so we place them in a category just above recycling: “for donation”

“Perhaps someone else will want it,” we tell ourselves. But WE don’t want it.

Inherent in this decision are assumptions about who is allowed to be beautiful and who is simply allowed to not go naked. Jesus said Solomon (one of the richest kings ever) was not as beautifully adorned as mere wildflowers which are here today and fade tomorrow. But do we really believe that?

In our culture it really doesn’t matter what you look like, as long as you’re fashionable the world will say you’re worthy and beautiful. There are many supposedly ugly people who are made stunning through their adornment. Celebrities are simply mediocre people transformed by the power of money and fashion. Though all assessment of personal beauty is subjective, we are trained to have a visual bias. Perhaps without realizing it we tend to find the rich stunning and the poor ugly.

And so a mere fashion show becomes not only visually jarring, but raises a deep theological question: is beauty superfluous?

Or to put it more specifically, in a country like Malawi with deep material needs and widespread poverty what could be more unnecessary than models walking the runway? The question seems logical, especially to socially minded Christians who care about the vulnerable and needy. Unfortunately this assumption we have is also straight from the mouth of Judas Iscariot.

In Mark 14 a woman comes and pours expensive perfume on Jesus to prepare him for death. Judas and the other disciples are outraged. Such an expensive item is better off being sold with proceeds given to the poor! Jesus responds: “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me…” (emphasis mine)

In other words, beauty is unnecessary where needs are so great. It is an extra feature for those who have reached a certain level of material resource.

This sustainable fashion show was called Denim Chill. The raw material for the designs came completely from the contents of those donation bins shipped over from America. Using stuff we no longer wanted because it wasn’t fresh enough, the creators of this show crafted beautiful outfits to be worn by both models and “ordinary” (I use this term ironically) people alike. This fashion show, perhaps unintentionally, became a powerful sermon reminding us of the inherent beauty and humanity in all of us.

Seemingly silly fashion can be both subversive and prophetic. It poses the question: who gets to be beautiful? The Christian answer: everyone, not just the rich and privileged.

And who is beautiful? Not even the wealth and resources of King Solomon could add to the ordinary beauty that embedded in all of us.

It makes you wonder, if we saw beauty for how it truly is, what would be different in our world today?

Fashion! Fashion!