Clothes given away to charity don't simply reach someone in need. They enter a long commercial chain: salvage houses in rich countries sort and compress them into bales, which are sold to wholesalers and retailers abroad before anyone wears them again. The donor rarely sees any of this.
Wearing foreign castoffs is not simple imitation of the West. Buyers choose, alter and restyle garments until they fit local rules of proper dress, and the clothes become local symbols of acceptable wear. Where the garment came from matters less than what it is made to mean.
In hard economic times, carefully chosen secondhand clothing lets people show they belong to the modern world even when their circumstances are otherwise compromised. Looking up to date becomes a way of holding on to standing that money alone can't secure.