There is a boy in Haiti. Another in Nairobi. A third in Dhaka.
They have never met. They speak no common language.
And yet, they are dressed the same.

A secondhand Zidane jersey. Oversized Adidas shorts. A faded Champions League logo peeling off a sleeve.

This is not coincidence. This is uniform.
This is not fashion. This is occupation.

Over the past decades, an aesthetic coup d’état has quietly unfolded, not with tanks, but with textiles.
A silent invasion, dropped in containers marked “aid” or “recycling,” scattering across the Global South like the aesthetic leftovers of another world.

In Haiti, this phenomenon is called Pepe, a word that once meant “secondhand” but now stands for something more, what is left of us.

This secondhand system does not uplift, it cannibalizes.
It floods markets, undermines local industries, erodes the cultural economy, and leaves behind dependency dressed up as generosity.

And yet, resistance exists.

Right here in Cap-Haïtien, I witnessed it.
At HAIFEX, the first and only event of its kind in Haiti, women entrepreneurs were not only present, they were honored.

In a capital under siege, they stood tall as pillars of creation, courage, and continuity.

Their names are Carmelle, Iris, Regina, Maryse, Wilmine, Anne-Isabelle.
Their ateliers have been raided, their streets overrun. And still, they create.

Belts. Hats. Hand-painted textiles. Carried on a motorbike, three at a time, through the city, just twelve hours before I left.
Photographed without makeup, without hair styling. Just truth.

I arrived in Haiti with no suitcase, it was stranded in Paris.
And in the most moving reversal I have ever known, Haiti dressed me.

These women are my Buffalo Soldiers.

Buffalo Soldiers were regiments made up of African and Caribbean troops forced to wear the uniform and fight for a country that did not belong to them, soldiers dressed in an imposed identity, serving a power that subjugated them.

Today, the same dynamic is visible in the armies of Pepe, secondhand clothing regiments spread across continents, dressing people in a uniform imposed by Western aesthetic hegemony.

But these women refuse to wear that uniform.
They keep their ateliers open, their looms running, their cotton fields alive.
They resist by creating their own identity, rejecting the imposed dress code and reclaiming their narrative.

The night before the shoot, Michel Chataigne, one of Haiti’s most revered designers, built a hat by hand in the dark.
Carolina, a Colombian designer, sent her exquisite pieces from the Andes.

Multicultural resistance is not a slogan, it is a system.
A living, breathing fabric made of skill, solidarity, and imagination.

In a world where sameness is exported, style becomes a form of sovereignty.
Because fashion, real fashion, must always remember:
Power and responsibility are two sides of the same fabric.