I had been
meaning to write a while ago on this very topic. Yet, constrained by a myriad
of activities that seem to endlessly suck time out of one’s day, necessitating seemingly
endless hours of each day. Well the topic is the Sapeurs of Congo and tis very
apropos my latest business discovery, that I am incredibly (and a bit surprisingly) passionate about:
fashion. Across its various levels: business, art, marketing etc, fashion is
wearable art, as I have come to discover; art I love.
Well, then
about the Sapeurs. On reading the piece about the Sapeurs of Congo on CNN, I
thought I had finally found sartorial role models. I could not believe the
finesse, the care that they had put into each of their outfits, and more than
anything, the “risk” they took in their wear. Here are some photos:
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Seeing the photos in the article, I could not but trace these colours to the
innumerable cloths I had seen in my annual visits to Africa – this continent
that has captured my imagination for years now. Whether they be called,
kapulanas in Mozambique or lambaonas in Madagascar, it is always such a visual explosion
of colour. The Sapeurs were just but a variant, a projection of this African
colour and “edition” unto “western clothing”. Soon enough my mind opened to another
fact, an article in the NY Times introduced me to Karl-Edwin Guerre and his
blog. It twas not so much his “posts”, but his own personal wear that proved
the most pulling (photos below):
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I found him
to be a direct link to the Sapeurs! He may be exotic or flamboyant amongst Western
audiences, but sartorially he would be a kindred soul in an afternoon in
Brazzaville. And these are just the men,
the “sapettes” (own coined term) are no different. The blogger Tamu Mcpherson (All the prettybirds) keeps the same line of colourful style “a la Afrique” (in my view).
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Here is
another example, Stella Jean, a Haitian designer based out of Italy introduced to me by the style team @ Daslu, with these
fabulous concoctions of colour in her website, here are some looks from her latest collection.
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I can
almost “see” the invisible line, threaded thru these varied personnae, despite ions
of influence of other cultures, yet uniting them. In many ways, once again we
all go back to Africa.
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