BUZIGAHILL returns to Berlin for its second fashion week with a clear mission: to become the best upcyclers in the world.
Set inside the towering halls of Berlin’s Kraftwerk, the show opens with a soundscape of bustling streets, honking cars, and roaring engines, setting the tone for an act of reclaiming agency: the creation of a space where discarded garments are discovered, questioned, and reinterpreted.
“Germany is one of the biggest consumers of fast fashion,” founder and designer Bobby Kolade explains after the show. “Presenting ‘RETURN TO SENDER’ is about intensifying the conversations about responsibilities and returning things to the place they originate from.”
Growing up between Lagos and Kampala, Kolade recalls visits to Owino Market, Uganda’s largest market for second-hand clothing. Piles of garments all the way from Europe, Asia, and North America shaped his early understanding of fast fashion’s global circulation. What appears as a donation in one context arrives as a means to local designers and artists being pushed out of the market, creating strong dependencies. This lived reality is at the heart of the brand’s mantra: RETURN TO SENDER.
One question echoes throughout the collection: Who Is To Blame?
The slogan is borrowed from Kampala’s taxi culture, where many of the vehicles are used cars imported from Japan, arriving in the capital to be repaired, repainted, and absorbed into the city’s daily rhythm. BUZIGAHILL brings these painted slogans onto the world’s stages, encouraging moments of collective reflection.
“Who is to blame for the clothing disaster? Who is to blame for overproduction? For waste? For the decline of textile industries in sub-Saharan Africa?” These are questions that Kolade repeatedly raises and attempts to answer with his designs.
RETURN TO SENDER 12 – Autumn/Winter 2026 looks even further back, to East Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, when independence brought hope and creativity. The same spirit runs through the entire collection: it combines the optimism of the past with contemporary fashion rebels such as the boda boda drivers, who redesign imported clothing to create their own style.
At its core, RETURN TO SENDER is about regaining the ability to act. It is about moving away from the logic of disposal and towards authorship, positioning Uganda not as an endpoint but as a production location within the global fashion industry. Upcycling is the future of fashion, and BUZIGAHILL is already shaping it.
“It feels great to be welcomed back to a city I once called home,” Kolade reflects.
“Berlin is where many of these clothes originate. Bringing them back here allows the conversation to become tangible.”
