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Paradise Is a Fabulous Suit
FOR THE CONGOLESE SAPEURS,
HAUTE COUTURE
ISN'T JUST
AN ABIDING PASSION, IT'S A RELIGION.
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By Anna Weinberg
Photos by Héctor Mediavilla Sabaté
Their canon of saints reads: Pierre Cardin, Roberto Cavalli, Dior, Fendi, Ferré,
Gaultier, Gucci, Jourdan, Miyake, Prada, Saint Laurent, Versace, Yamamoto. A typical ballad runs: “Listen my love.
On our wedding day/The label will be Torrente/The label will be Giorgio Armani/The label will be Daniel Hechter/The label for the
shoes will be J. M. Weston.” Brussels, their shopping mecca, is referred to in Congolese as Lola, meaning paradise.
These are sapeurs, acolytes of a 25-year-old movement called la SAPE—La Societé des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes (aka Kitendi, the religion of
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Brazzavile, Republic of Congo, 2004
Sapeur Bienvenu Mouzieto taking his signature pose in front of his home.
Along with an impeccable wardrobe, each of the Sapeurs cultivates a unique repertoire of poses. |
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the cloth) — that revolves around the possession of the most expensive,
most luxurious, most extravagant fashion in the world. Followers of SAPE wear $10,000 jackets and $500 shoes, but these mostly young Congolese men otherwise barely eke out a living in the rubble of Kinshasa and Brazzaville or the ghettos of Paris and Brussels, washing dishes or washing bodies, and sometimes selling their own.
The craze started with le Pape de la SAPE—intermediary between the gods of fashion and practicing
sapeurs—the musician Papa Wemba, born Jules Shungu Wembadio Pene Kikumba in the Kasai River region of the Belgian Congo. Papa Wemba, an emerging pop star in the late 1960s, fomented a revolution in self-presentation, agitating for pizzazz over the dowdy duds
prescribed by Mobutu Sese Seko's “authenticity movement.” Mobutu was the first leader of Zaire
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after it was renamed—freshly liberated from Belgium in 1960 (Zaire is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). His authenticity movement,
which frowned on all associations with Western culture, was part of an effort to distinguish African-controlled Zaire
from the Belgian-controlled Congo. Under Mobutu, anything from Christianity to neckties was in danger of being banned.
For Papa Wemba, this meant the horror of being expected to perform onstage in the traditional raffia skirt and cowrie-shell hat.
Authenticity was all right but, from his perspective, this costume lacked a certain ...elegance. Luckily, his new group,
Viva La Musica, had gotten so wildly popular both in Zaire and abroad that he found himself with more cash and more independence
than most Congolese. Along with importing the European fashions he'd admired
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| Papa Wemba, an emerging pop star in the late 1960s, fomented a revolution in self-presentation
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as a child, Papa Wemba was able to establish a
village in the suburbs of Kinshasa, in which a fashion code—centered on the beret—was imposed. Multiple trips to Paris
in the early 1980s only fueled his fever for French fashion, and Papa Wemba soon developed a flamboyant, exaggerated style that was
in direct opposition to the Mobutu-approved uniform, the dreaded abacost (from the French “ý bas le costume,”
or “down with the suit”), a dull Zairean version of the three-piece suit. He called his new style Ungaru, and it was
a throwback to the elegance of the 1930s—complete with tapered trousers, brogues, neatly trimmed hair and tweed hats worn at a
rakish angle. For Congolese all over the world, the look was irresistible. SAPE was born.
These days, though, the passion for fashion has morphed into a craze for labels, the more expensive the better. While
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A three-and-a-half-year-old sapeur — wearing an eye patch in
imitation of his uncle, the famouse K.V.V Mouzieto, a grand Sapeur who lives in paris — struts down a dusty street.
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the Brazzaville faithful keep to a strict three-color rule—including accessories—for
any outfit, in Kinshasa and among the immigrants in Europe, the look is more hip-hop, and features a blinding array of patterns and
hues. But in both groups, designer names are at such a premium that rival sapeurs will do battle with each other, flashing
label after label, trying to best their opponent, stripping down, if necessary, to their underwear. “It's combat,”
says Héctor Mediavilla Sabaté, a photographer who's been studying the sapeurs since 2003, “and the
clothes are the weapons.”
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the average annual income is about US$100, among the lowest in the world, according to
the World Bank. And Congolese immigrants in Europe are among the poorest, but many
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The Sapeurs of Brazzaville
Out on the town. |
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willingly spend as much on a jacket as they would
on a house in Kinshasa. As Mediavilla says, “it is obvious that there is an inconsistency
between the way they live and the way they dress.” Even wealthy Papa Wemba had to resort to tricks to keep himself in
Cavalli—soliciting money for working the names of fellow sapeurs into his songs and, recently, charging upwards
of US$4,000 for smuggling Congolese men and women into Europe disguised as members of his band, which led to his arrest in
France in 2003 (whereupon there were riots in Kinshasa).
Other sapeurs employ different methods to finance their wardrobes. Before visas became difficult to get, some would
travel to Europe to buy clothing to sell back home in Kinshasa or Brazzaville. Some rely on Congolese shoplifting gangs in
Brussels and Paris to send them he latest Armani. Many
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have spent time in jail.
Some cobble together outfits by borrowing
“Only the people who lent the clothes know they were borrowed,” explains Mediavilla. For the sapeurs, he continues,
the right clothes have the power of transmutation. “When they go out dressed up, they walk differently. They give
themselves airs of importance. They show off. Sometimes they don't talk to other people—even their friends—as
if they really were famous. They're stars for that night. It's worth it, isn't it?”
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