This paper analyses the intersection between fashion, recycling, and environmental consciousness by examining how African activist designers transform discarded clothing into new garments or artworks.The fast fashion's global spread makes it one of the world's biggest polluters, generating climate change that leads to catastrophes.Informal African markets are flooded with charity donations or wholesale clothing, perpetuating “waste colonialism” while mitigating the aftermath of catastrophes. Arriving in bundles, these clothes are often known by names such as "Dead White Man's Clothes" in Zimbabwe, “Fardo” in Angola, "Clothes of Calamity (Xicalamidades)” in Mozambique, which refer to their original form and purpose and associate them with the idea of death and calamity, catastrophes according to René Thom (1972).Catastrophe, thus understood as a process that creates (or destroys) forms - a process of “morphogenesis” that shakes “structural stability” (Petitot, 2015) - is uniquely embodied by fashion, which is nothing other than the death and ghostly resurrection of forms (Baudrillard, 1976).Designers behind the brands such as "Doutor dos Tecidos” or “Mima-te” exemplify the process of morphogenesis by repurposing second-hand clothes from Maputo's markets. Similarly, Namibian Ina Maria Shikongo uses scraps of fabric and plastic waste to advocate for the environment through fashion: “Giving the trash a new look that carries the essence of what the future should be like” (Shikongo, @inamariashikongo).Fashion is always an immediate and total recycling of past forms (Baudrillard, Ibid) and the new life of clothing speaks the language of sustainability, not to be wasted.