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PM me when you make an original slim tie.Originally Posted by donjuan513
Finished up a second round of bow ties and handkies. This one is reversible.
Dressing better
- Thread in 'General' Thread starter Started by truballa72189,
- Start date
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D3 is like a parachute....
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Maiden Nior F/W 2011
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Nvm
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I haven't seen them release new stuff in years. I liked what they put out before. It's funny how all the streetwear brands copy each other and now all look like workwear / construction / hard labor type clothing.
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Originally Posted by donjuan513
Picked up this shawl from Jack Spade, great fit to it.
Can you give me some info on the fit of this?
I'm debating between L and XL.
I like my clothes loose but not baggy and sloppy
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Originally Posted by prestigeworldwidex21
Maiden Nior F/W 2011
Fresh as Hell I need to see your wardrobe looks like something I would wear.
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Where can I get beige and blue suede bucks
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Good read from the Wall Street Journal Magazine
[h1]The Beau Brummels of Brazzaville[/h1][h2]The Sapeurs of Congo are the world's unlikeliest fashionistas, ordinary workingmen whose inspired style helps them survive in a country torn by civil war.[/h2]
Photograph by Jackie Nickerson
LA VIE EN SAPE | Christian Malala posing in front of his home in Bakongo.
At La Main Bleue, an outdoor club hidden in the back alleys of Brazzaville, Hassan Salvador enters like he owns not just the Congo but the world: Gianfranco Ferré umbrella stretched open overhead, though no rain is likely to fall, salmon-colored silk scarf draped on top of his tie and sport coat, though it has to be 90 degrees Fahrenheit on the terrace. Salvador, a tall 34-year-old with his head shaved shiny, prances, struts and strides between blue plastic tables covered with brown-glass bottles of beer. As all eyes turn to him, Salvador comes to a precise stop before the dance floor, stretches out his left arm so that his sleeve slides up, uncovering his wristwatch, and checks the time.
Populating the place, slowly sipping beer or gracefully stepping to the music, are a collection of Congolese men dressed much like Salvador, in European-style suits tailored to fit, complemented by bold pocket squares and textured ties, accessorized with Holmesian pipes and elegant hats. These well-dressed gentlemen aren't African big men slapping each other on the back to celebrate just-consummated deals. They're Congolese everymen—taxi drivers, carpenters, gravediggers—assembled here on this sunny Sunday afternoon because they're what locals call Sapeurs, men who believe in the uplifting, redeeming, beatifying effect of dressing well. True Sapeurs, like Salvador, are willing to put their hard-earned cash behind that belief, spending improbably large sums of Central African Francs to buy French crocodile shoes, British sport coats, handmade Italian ties. Salvador resumes his martial parade, locates the young men in his clique, called the Piccadilly Group, and, in a complicated and choreographed set of motions, removes his jacket, folds it neatly in half over his seatback, sits down and crosses his right leg over his left to reveal a colorful flash of sock, then finally starts to talk with his friends—and assess the outfits of the other Sapeurs.
As Salvador huddles with his posse, an old man sits alone at a table nearby, relaxing with a single-serving bottle of cheap red wine and tending his pipe. Bidounga Ferdinand, 60 years old, has been a Sapeur for 40 of those years. Sapology, as they call it here, is in his blood: Ferdinand's father and brothers were all Sapeurs. Ferdinand doesn't come here to compete with other Sapes or converse with comrades—he comes back most weeks, dressed like this, because these clothes lift him up and make him the man he wants to be. He now works only sporadically as a carpenter, so he can't buy new outfits that often. But what he's earned from 40 years of toil he wears with style. Today it's green-and-blue-plaid pants, a complementing silk plaid vest, tall green hat and wide yellow tie knotted large and tacked high, with a striped jacket that picks up a little of all these colors. It's a British ensemble, no doubt, but with striking pattern matching and color coordination that few people on the isles of Britannia would have the courage to attempt.
[h3]Photos: Unlikeliest Fashionistas[/h3]
View Slideshow
Photograph by Jackie Nickerson
Patience Mountala, aka Sam, dressed up for a funeral
I've come to the two Congos—the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its neighbor the Republic of the Congo—to understand what meaning the Sapeurs of Brazzaville and Kinshasa find in the clothes they wear. Formality is on the decline the world over. Most men don a suit only when business or custom demands it. I want to know why this group of Central Africans, positioned at the epicenter of chaos, poverty and civil war, have chosen to exalt in the pleasure of extravagant clothes they have absolutely no practical reason to wear. (Sapeurs take their name from the acronym for their group: SAPE, meaning Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes. Ambianceur is a neologism coined in francophone Africa, which means persons who create ambience—atmosphere-makers, if you will.)
When I chat with ordinary people in Brazza about these men, I hear the same refrains: "Here in the Congo everyone is a Sapeur." "Sapology is in our blood." "The president of our nation is our greatest Sapeur." After reciting these platitudes, though, people are mostly just amazed that working-class men in their struggling Central African nation would sacrifice the chance to buy a car, move to a better house, or pay their children's school tuitions in order to underwrite an obsessive interest in old-school European menswear.
Some Congolese, though, see the Sapeurs differently. A few days before I visited La Main Bleue, I sat in the office of Alain Akouala Atipault, a powerful government minister, who explained the reasons this movement has emerged in Congo. Atipault, a man whom the Sapeurs have crowned an honorary Sape, was dressed in an elegant dark blue suit. "The Sapeurs can only exist in peacetime," Atipault told me. "To me they're a sign of better things: stability, tranquility. They indicate that our nation is returning to normal life after years of civil war."
By now dozens of Sapeurs have converged on La Main Bleue, chatting amongst themselves, dancing with some women who have joined the party, and sussing out everyone else's attire. All the Sapeurs are wearing odd jackets or suits, always with a tie, mostly with a pocket square and braces not belts. What makes these outfits much more than well-executed boardroom attire are the bright colors and daring pattern and tone combinations: Salvador has matched a rust sport coat with a maroon tie and salmon-colored pants. There are blue-and-yellow-plaid suits, entirely pink ensembles and various other outfits running the gamut of the pastels.
The general rule for Brazza Sapes is said to be that they wear no more than three colors at a time. In fact what this seems to mean is three tones, not counting white. Pocket squares aren't folded but stuffed in and left to spill out, rakishly. Patch pockets abound, an unconventional feature on most jackets. The outfits are dandyish, but they don't come off as costumes. Some Sapes boast of their brands, especially their shoe brands, of which J.M. Weston, a fine and expensive French shoemaker, seems to be the most prominent. But most Sapes agree that brand isn't everything—it's about fit, confidence and, as Hassan Salvador tells me, art: "We need to paint with colors, patterns and textures," he says. "All week I mull over the different possible combinations of jacket, trousers, pocket square, tie, tie pin, scarf, umbrella and suspenders before I actually put on the clothes."
The sight of these splendidly dressed men is in stark contrast to their surroundings. The bar where they assemble, La Main Bleue, sits in a district called Bakongo, a working-class quarter populated primarily by people from the Lari ethnic group. Though Sapeurs also hail from other parts of Brazzaville, Bakongo is their spiritual and historical home. The streets and alleyways outside the bar are made of dirt, littered with refuse and remains, and lined by tin-topped shacks. A gauntlet of kids and adults forms spontaneously as soon as the Sapeurs start stepping out of taxis and cars to enter the bar. The crowd stares at them in wonder, shouting out the names of some of the well-known Sapeurs as they recognize them walking by.
As the sun sets over the nearby Congo River, I see two tall, thin Sapeurs shaking hands and bending their necks to touch at the forehead, a traditional Congolese greeting. They hold the pose for a moment, silhouettes locked in a solemn prayer. Then they look up, laugh, and take to the dance floor, facing off in the stepping, swaying combat of the Sapeurs. The younger of the two, Idris, wears a pink suit, white shirt, red bow tie and red flower in his lapel buttonhole. His foe on the dance floor, Elyfontaine, a middle-aged taxi driver, is in a white double-breasted linen sport coat with a teal square spilling out of the pocket and crocodile double monk strap shoes polished to a high shine. He pulls up his pant legs a little to display his shoes as he slams his feet down on the dance floor. Their dance match is low-key—the most intense face-offs take place in the summer, when Congolese Sapes living in Paris or Brussels come home to take on Sapeurs who have stayed behind.
Photograph by Jackie Nickerson
FANCY FLOURISHES | A member of Papa Griffe's crew poses in Kinshasa
Eventually Elyfontaine, the lanky taxi driver, sits down to wipe his brow and sip a beer. "When I dress like this, it's like I have the Holy Spirit in me," he says. "I'm at ease, as if I were sinless." His older brothers were Sapeurs before him, he tells me. When Elyfontaine saw them dressing up for the first time he was just 12, but he knew: "I said to myself, 'La sape, this is me.' "
By now everyone's been drinking ice-cold Congolese beer and dancing for hours. Still, the vibe remains calm and cool. "You can't fight or get drunk when you're a Sapeur," Elyfontaine says. I ask him why not, expecting some Gandhian philosophy of nonviolence underpinning the movement. "My clothes are way too expensive for that," he says, smiling, before standing up to dance again. Watching him walk onto the dance floor I realize that when men dress as Sapeurs they become different people. Their gait, their gestures, and their manner of speaking are all transformed. The clothes are the gateway into a whole other way of being in the world.
Brazzaville and Kinshasa, separated by a mere 10-minute ferry ride across the Congo River, are the closest two capital cities on Earth. But what a difference 10 minutes make. The chaos outside Kinshasa's customs hall—porters bent in two under backbreaking loads, limbless beggars crying out from the gutter, hustlers of every stripe and style—makes the squalor of Brazzaville seem quaint and Disneyfied. Kinshasa is almost certainly the largest French-speaking city in the world, with at least 9, probably 11, really who knows how many millions of people stuffed into its confines. These countless millions are served by a public sector that would have trouble cleaning the garbage and policing the streets of a small town. "Kin," as they call it, is expensive, dangerous, extravagant and bizarre, like a brilliant but psychotic friend who drags you along on his flights of fancy. There is crushing poverty of a severity and scale that can't be found across the river in Brazza. There is also fantastic wealth flowing out of the ground in the form of cobalt, coltan, copper and diamonds, detouring through the pockets of the country's big men, then shipped abroad to build cell phones and supply Chinese industry.
When I enter the lobby of the Grand Hotel, where Muhammad Ali and George Foreman bunked during their Rumble in the Jungle, the sky outside goes dark, though it's still early evening, and gusts of wind blow through the entryway. A vast, ornate crystal chandelier rings out with the sound of a thousand wind chimes. Suddenly, spectacularly, a foot-long pointed crystal falls and shatters on the marble floor, missing a Congolese guest by a couple of inches. She doesn't even flinch, as if it's the most ordinary thing in the world to nearly have your nose sheared off by a crystal fragment. The clerk behind the desk, wearing an ancient necktie that commemorates Soviet-Zairean cooperation with the embroidered flags of each country, ignores the woman—and the chandelier.
When I finally make it up to my room, which rents for US$300 per night, it has neither functioning air conditioning nor Internet. Ten minutes later, after I've relocated to a second room, the lamp next to my bed billows black smoke and erupts into flames, triggering the fire alarm and evacuating the floor. All told it is a typical couple of hours in the DRC: smashing glasswork, flames and smoke, and a population that has seen it all.
The next day, a man known as Papa Griffe meets us at a TV station downtown dressed in a midnight-blue shirt, jeans and reptile-skin cowboy boots. Griffe, eyes obscured by the dark sunglasses he wears indoors, announces with little preamble that he's the leader of all the Congo's Sapeurs. I ask him when and where they assemble. "Wherever and whenever you want," he says with a wide grin. But, he continues, it'll cost you. Clothes, transport, everything is expensive in Kinshasa. After we give him some money to cover the cost of the Sapeurs' travel. Griffe tells me that his most famous outfit is composed entirely of snakeskin. "But I won't be wearing that tomorrow unless you give me more money. It's an expensive ensemble and so I have to charge extra to put it on."
The next day, as we wait at a rendezvous point at the side of the road, Papa Griffe calls. "The Sapeurs are arriving," he says, "but don't talk to them until I come. I'll be there soon." On cue we see some teenagers ambling into a doorway nearby, dressed in improbable outfits—leopard-patterned velvet pants, billowing black jackets, plaid blankets wrapped like skirts and paired with tuxedo shirts and combat boots. The kids look like they've been playing dress-up. After a few words with these guys, who are pleasant enough, and with Papa Griffe on the phone, who isn't, it becomes clear that Griffe's likely press-ganged them into this stunt in order to pocket the transport cash we gave him. We exit the scene before Griffe arrives. After 10 or 15 frantic phone calls from him, asking where we've gone, desperate to have us return and photograph him, he even offers to don the snakeskin suit at no extra charge. I start to wonder whether spontaneous, indigenous Sapology exists at all in Kinshasa.
Photograph by Jackie Nickerson
Vivion Afifi holds up his casque colonial.
Later that day, we descend on Matété, a tough, dusty and deserted quarter on the southeastern side of Kinshasa, where T****enge Kalubi, a local Sapeur, lives with his mother and siblings. Kalubi leads us past a black pitted cauldron of meat and green vegetable stew simmering over an outdoor fire, up the stairs past his numerous young relatives, and onto the rooftop, where we look over the low-rise shacks of Matété. Kalubi comes back upstairs dressed in an all-black haute-couture version of the one-piece front-buttoned French mechanic's uniform, paired with tall black combat boots and a black leather cap. It's a strange, arresting and somehow appropriate outfit for the monotone surroundings: brown streets littered with washed-out, burnt-out abandoned vehicles that no mechanic, no matter what outfit he wears, will ever bring back to life.
Soon Yves Kandaiz, a Sapeur friend of Kalubi, arrives dressed in a flowing black all-Yohji-Yamamoto outfit—a skirt and hooded-jacket combo that makes him look like one of the sand people in "Star Wars." Brazzaville Sapes worship classical fashion. Kin Sapeurs, they tell me, adore Yohji because his style is violent and brutal, in line with the spirit of their city. Where Salvador and Elyfontaine, over in Brazzaville, dressed, strutted and spoke like someone from a Somerset Maugham novel, Kalubi and Kandaiz take to the streets in an utterly different way: Kandaiz extends one arm and holds his jacket open, as if spreading a wing, to reveal the Yohji label inside. Kalubi stomps in the dirt like he's marching off to war.
I admire their attempt to find a style that reflects the anarchic, neo-noir atmosphere of their world. But Kin is a broken-down shell of a city and there's no constancy in the Sape culture here. Life in today's DRC grinds people down, lays them to waste. The corruption that plunders the nation's mineral wealth has even trickled down to its snakeskin suits. Elegance and extravagance just don't seem able to offer an escape from problems that run so deep.
Back in Brazzaville, I'm seeing the Sapeurs with a newly skeptical eye: Was I tricked into believing that Sapeur culture here was real and vital? Had La Main Bleue just been a fashion show for the benefit of foreign observers? I get a call from Salvador to meet him and his Piccadilly crew the next morning.
Traffic is halted in the streets of Bakongo. We jump out of our taxis and Salvador marches in front of his crew of five, leading them onto the median and eventually catching up with another crew of Sapeurs who walk at the front of a funeral procession. Everyone on the streets stares at the Sapeurs, who march before the coffin with a joyful, even comical gait that brings to mind the exuberance of the death dances of a jazz funeral in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans.
Christian Malala, a local Sape, leads the pack, dressed in a Prince of Wales–patterned suit with wide peak lapels, slanted ticket pocket, surgeon's cuffs open and rolled up slightly, pipe protruding from his mouth, holding aloft a wooden cane that he alternately uses to twirl like a baton or brace himself during his animated pantomime of a kind of falling, twisting, drunken instability. Marching behind him is another member of his crew dressed in full Scottish regalia: wool socks with garters, plaid kilt and cap, a traditional chained leather purse dangling from his waist. Two female Sapeurs, in outfits made almost entirely of denim, also march in the funeral procession. Vivion Afifi is in a bright baby-blue suit and black pith helmet, with red bow tie and cumberbund. Afifi wears a lapel pin with an enamel-covered sepia photo of a man called André Matsoua, an important early-20th-century Congolese political figure who returned from France dressed like a European and is now recognized as the first Grand Sapeur of the Congo.
Their march is called a diatance, taken from the Lari word for walking, and it's a traditional way for Sapeurs to send off their dead. Riding shotgun in the hearse is Mouandza Jean Didier, a Paris Sape who goes by Didier Al Capone and has come home to bury his father. Though he's lived in Paris for 22 years, the men marching are his old Sapeur gang from Brazza. "This procession is a way for these friends to show me that they're sharing my soul right now," he says. "I haven't thanked them yet because I'm so moved that I can't even find the words." He looks at his friends, dressed regally to march through the streets of his neighborhood on this special, sad occasion. "They're real," he says, the highest compliment he could pay to his fellow Sapeurs.
[h1]The Beau Brummels of Brazzaville[/h1][h2]The Sapeurs of Congo are the world's unlikeliest fashionistas, ordinary workingmen whose inspired style helps them survive in a country torn by civil war.[/h2]
LA VIE EN SAPE | Christian Malala posing in front of his home in Bakongo.
At La Main Bleue, an outdoor club hidden in the back alleys of Brazzaville, Hassan Salvador enters like he owns not just the Congo but the world: Gianfranco Ferré umbrella stretched open overhead, though no rain is likely to fall, salmon-colored silk scarf draped on top of his tie and sport coat, though it has to be 90 degrees Fahrenheit on the terrace. Salvador, a tall 34-year-old with his head shaved shiny, prances, struts and strides between blue plastic tables covered with brown-glass bottles of beer. As all eyes turn to him, Salvador comes to a precise stop before the dance floor, stretches out his left arm so that his sleeve slides up, uncovering his wristwatch, and checks the time.
Populating the place, slowly sipping beer or gracefully stepping to the music, are a collection of Congolese men dressed much like Salvador, in European-style suits tailored to fit, complemented by bold pocket squares and textured ties, accessorized with Holmesian pipes and elegant hats. These well-dressed gentlemen aren't African big men slapping each other on the back to celebrate just-consummated deals. They're Congolese everymen—taxi drivers, carpenters, gravediggers—assembled here on this sunny Sunday afternoon because they're what locals call Sapeurs, men who believe in the uplifting, redeeming, beatifying effect of dressing well. True Sapeurs, like Salvador, are willing to put their hard-earned cash behind that belief, spending improbably large sums of Central African Francs to buy French crocodile shoes, British sport coats, handmade Italian ties. Salvador resumes his martial parade, locates the young men in his clique, called the Piccadilly Group, and, in a complicated and choreographed set of motions, removes his jacket, folds it neatly in half over his seatback, sits down and crosses his right leg over his left to reveal a colorful flash of sock, then finally starts to talk with his friends—and assess the outfits of the other Sapeurs.
As Salvador huddles with his posse, an old man sits alone at a table nearby, relaxing with a single-serving bottle of cheap red wine and tending his pipe. Bidounga Ferdinand, 60 years old, has been a Sapeur for 40 of those years. Sapology, as they call it here, is in his blood: Ferdinand's father and brothers were all Sapeurs. Ferdinand doesn't come here to compete with other Sapes or converse with comrades—he comes back most weeks, dressed like this, because these clothes lift him up and make him the man he wants to be. He now works only sporadically as a carpenter, so he can't buy new outfits that often. But what he's earned from 40 years of toil he wears with style. Today it's green-and-blue-plaid pants, a complementing silk plaid vest, tall green hat and wide yellow tie knotted large and tacked high, with a striped jacket that picks up a little of all these colors. It's a British ensemble, no doubt, but with striking pattern matching and color coordination that few people on the isles of Britannia would have the courage to attempt.
[h3]Photos: Unlikeliest Fashionistas[/h3]
View Slideshow
Photograph by Jackie Nickerson
Patience Mountala, aka Sam, dressed up for a funeral
I've come to the two Congos—the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its neighbor the Republic of the Congo—to understand what meaning the Sapeurs of Brazzaville and Kinshasa find in the clothes they wear. Formality is on the decline the world over. Most men don a suit only when business or custom demands it. I want to know why this group of Central Africans, positioned at the epicenter of chaos, poverty and civil war, have chosen to exalt in the pleasure of extravagant clothes they have absolutely no practical reason to wear. (Sapeurs take their name from the acronym for their group: SAPE, meaning Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes. Ambianceur is a neologism coined in francophone Africa, which means persons who create ambience—atmosphere-makers, if you will.)
When I chat with ordinary people in Brazza about these men, I hear the same refrains: "Here in the Congo everyone is a Sapeur." "Sapology is in our blood." "The president of our nation is our greatest Sapeur." After reciting these platitudes, though, people are mostly just amazed that working-class men in their struggling Central African nation would sacrifice the chance to buy a car, move to a better house, or pay their children's school tuitions in order to underwrite an obsessive interest in old-school European menswear.
Some Congolese, though, see the Sapeurs differently. A few days before I visited La Main Bleue, I sat in the office of Alain Akouala Atipault, a powerful government minister, who explained the reasons this movement has emerged in Congo. Atipault, a man whom the Sapeurs have crowned an honorary Sape, was dressed in an elegant dark blue suit. "The Sapeurs can only exist in peacetime," Atipault told me. "To me they're a sign of better things: stability, tranquility. They indicate that our nation is returning to normal life after years of civil war."
By now dozens of Sapeurs have converged on La Main Bleue, chatting amongst themselves, dancing with some women who have joined the party, and sussing out everyone else's attire. All the Sapeurs are wearing odd jackets or suits, always with a tie, mostly with a pocket square and braces not belts. What makes these outfits much more than well-executed boardroom attire are the bright colors and daring pattern and tone combinations: Salvador has matched a rust sport coat with a maroon tie and salmon-colored pants. There are blue-and-yellow-plaid suits, entirely pink ensembles and various other outfits running the gamut of the pastels.
The general rule for Brazza Sapes is said to be that they wear no more than three colors at a time. In fact what this seems to mean is three tones, not counting white. Pocket squares aren't folded but stuffed in and left to spill out, rakishly. Patch pockets abound, an unconventional feature on most jackets. The outfits are dandyish, but they don't come off as costumes. Some Sapes boast of their brands, especially their shoe brands, of which J.M. Weston, a fine and expensive French shoemaker, seems to be the most prominent. But most Sapes agree that brand isn't everything—it's about fit, confidence and, as Hassan Salvador tells me, art: "We need to paint with colors, patterns and textures," he says. "All week I mull over the different possible combinations of jacket, trousers, pocket square, tie, tie pin, scarf, umbrella and suspenders before I actually put on the clothes."
The sight of these splendidly dressed men is in stark contrast to their surroundings. The bar where they assemble, La Main Bleue, sits in a district called Bakongo, a working-class quarter populated primarily by people from the Lari ethnic group. Though Sapeurs also hail from other parts of Brazzaville, Bakongo is their spiritual and historical home. The streets and alleyways outside the bar are made of dirt, littered with refuse and remains, and lined by tin-topped shacks. A gauntlet of kids and adults forms spontaneously as soon as the Sapeurs start stepping out of taxis and cars to enter the bar. The crowd stares at them in wonder, shouting out the names of some of the well-known Sapeurs as they recognize them walking by.
As the sun sets over the nearby Congo River, I see two tall, thin Sapeurs shaking hands and bending their necks to touch at the forehead, a traditional Congolese greeting. They hold the pose for a moment, silhouettes locked in a solemn prayer. Then they look up, laugh, and take to the dance floor, facing off in the stepping, swaying combat of the Sapeurs. The younger of the two, Idris, wears a pink suit, white shirt, red bow tie and red flower in his lapel buttonhole. His foe on the dance floor, Elyfontaine, a middle-aged taxi driver, is in a white double-breasted linen sport coat with a teal square spilling out of the pocket and crocodile double monk strap shoes polished to a high shine. He pulls up his pant legs a little to display his shoes as he slams his feet down on the dance floor. Their dance match is low-key—the most intense face-offs take place in the summer, when Congolese Sapes living in Paris or Brussels come home to take on Sapeurs who have stayed behind.
FANCY FLOURISHES | A member of Papa Griffe's crew poses in Kinshasa
Eventually Elyfontaine, the lanky taxi driver, sits down to wipe his brow and sip a beer. "When I dress like this, it's like I have the Holy Spirit in me," he says. "I'm at ease, as if I were sinless." His older brothers were Sapeurs before him, he tells me. When Elyfontaine saw them dressing up for the first time he was just 12, but he knew: "I said to myself, 'La sape, this is me.' "
By now everyone's been drinking ice-cold Congolese beer and dancing for hours. Still, the vibe remains calm and cool. "You can't fight or get drunk when you're a Sapeur," Elyfontaine says. I ask him why not, expecting some Gandhian philosophy of nonviolence underpinning the movement. "My clothes are way too expensive for that," he says, smiling, before standing up to dance again. Watching him walk onto the dance floor I realize that when men dress as Sapeurs they become different people. Their gait, their gestures, and their manner of speaking are all transformed. The clothes are the gateway into a whole other way of being in the world.
Brazzaville and Kinshasa, separated by a mere 10-minute ferry ride across the Congo River, are the closest two capital cities on Earth. But what a difference 10 minutes make. The chaos outside Kinshasa's customs hall—porters bent in two under backbreaking loads, limbless beggars crying out from the gutter, hustlers of every stripe and style—makes the squalor of Brazzaville seem quaint and Disneyfied. Kinshasa is almost certainly the largest French-speaking city in the world, with at least 9, probably 11, really who knows how many millions of people stuffed into its confines. These countless millions are served by a public sector that would have trouble cleaning the garbage and policing the streets of a small town. "Kin," as they call it, is expensive, dangerous, extravagant and bizarre, like a brilliant but psychotic friend who drags you along on his flights of fancy. There is crushing poverty of a severity and scale that can't be found across the river in Brazza. There is also fantastic wealth flowing out of the ground in the form of cobalt, coltan, copper and diamonds, detouring through the pockets of the country's big men, then shipped abroad to build cell phones and supply Chinese industry.
When I enter the lobby of the Grand Hotel, where Muhammad Ali and George Foreman bunked during their Rumble in the Jungle, the sky outside goes dark, though it's still early evening, and gusts of wind blow through the entryway. A vast, ornate crystal chandelier rings out with the sound of a thousand wind chimes. Suddenly, spectacularly, a foot-long pointed crystal falls and shatters on the marble floor, missing a Congolese guest by a couple of inches. She doesn't even flinch, as if it's the most ordinary thing in the world to nearly have your nose sheared off by a crystal fragment. The clerk behind the desk, wearing an ancient necktie that commemorates Soviet-Zairean cooperation with the embroidered flags of each country, ignores the woman—and the chandelier.
When I finally make it up to my room, which rents for US$300 per night, it has neither functioning air conditioning nor Internet. Ten minutes later, after I've relocated to a second room, the lamp next to my bed billows black smoke and erupts into flames, triggering the fire alarm and evacuating the floor. All told it is a typical couple of hours in the DRC: smashing glasswork, flames and smoke, and a population that has seen it all.
The next day, a man known as Papa Griffe meets us at a TV station downtown dressed in a midnight-blue shirt, jeans and reptile-skin cowboy boots. Griffe, eyes obscured by the dark sunglasses he wears indoors, announces with little preamble that he's the leader of all the Congo's Sapeurs. I ask him when and where they assemble. "Wherever and whenever you want," he says with a wide grin. But, he continues, it'll cost you. Clothes, transport, everything is expensive in Kinshasa. After we give him some money to cover the cost of the Sapeurs' travel. Griffe tells me that his most famous outfit is composed entirely of snakeskin. "But I won't be wearing that tomorrow unless you give me more money. It's an expensive ensemble and so I have to charge extra to put it on."
The next day, as we wait at a rendezvous point at the side of the road, Papa Griffe calls. "The Sapeurs are arriving," he says, "but don't talk to them until I come. I'll be there soon." On cue we see some teenagers ambling into a doorway nearby, dressed in improbable outfits—leopard-patterned velvet pants, billowing black jackets, plaid blankets wrapped like skirts and paired with tuxedo shirts and combat boots. The kids look like they've been playing dress-up. After a few words with these guys, who are pleasant enough, and with Papa Griffe on the phone, who isn't, it becomes clear that Griffe's likely press-ganged them into this stunt in order to pocket the transport cash we gave him. We exit the scene before Griffe arrives. After 10 or 15 frantic phone calls from him, asking where we've gone, desperate to have us return and photograph him, he even offers to don the snakeskin suit at no extra charge. I start to wonder whether spontaneous, indigenous Sapology exists at all in Kinshasa.
Vivion Afifi holds up his casque colonial.
Later that day, we descend on Matété, a tough, dusty and deserted quarter on the southeastern side of Kinshasa, where T****enge Kalubi, a local Sapeur, lives with his mother and siblings. Kalubi leads us past a black pitted cauldron of meat and green vegetable stew simmering over an outdoor fire, up the stairs past his numerous young relatives, and onto the rooftop, where we look over the low-rise shacks of Matété. Kalubi comes back upstairs dressed in an all-black haute-couture version of the one-piece front-buttoned French mechanic's uniform, paired with tall black combat boots and a black leather cap. It's a strange, arresting and somehow appropriate outfit for the monotone surroundings: brown streets littered with washed-out, burnt-out abandoned vehicles that no mechanic, no matter what outfit he wears, will ever bring back to life.
Soon Yves Kandaiz, a Sapeur friend of Kalubi, arrives dressed in a flowing black all-Yohji-Yamamoto outfit—a skirt and hooded-jacket combo that makes him look like one of the sand people in "Star Wars." Brazzaville Sapes worship classical fashion. Kin Sapeurs, they tell me, adore Yohji because his style is violent and brutal, in line with the spirit of their city. Where Salvador and Elyfontaine, over in Brazzaville, dressed, strutted and spoke like someone from a Somerset Maugham novel, Kalubi and Kandaiz take to the streets in an utterly different way: Kandaiz extends one arm and holds his jacket open, as if spreading a wing, to reveal the Yohji label inside. Kalubi stomps in the dirt like he's marching off to war.
I admire their attempt to find a style that reflects the anarchic, neo-noir atmosphere of their world. But Kin is a broken-down shell of a city and there's no constancy in the Sape culture here. Life in today's DRC grinds people down, lays them to waste. The corruption that plunders the nation's mineral wealth has even trickled down to its snakeskin suits. Elegance and extravagance just don't seem able to offer an escape from problems that run so deep.
Back in Brazzaville, I'm seeing the Sapeurs with a newly skeptical eye: Was I tricked into believing that Sapeur culture here was real and vital? Had La Main Bleue just been a fashion show for the benefit of foreign observers? I get a call from Salvador to meet him and his Piccadilly crew the next morning.
Traffic is halted in the streets of Bakongo. We jump out of our taxis and Salvador marches in front of his crew of five, leading them onto the median and eventually catching up with another crew of Sapeurs who walk at the front of a funeral procession. Everyone on the streets stares at the Sapeurs, who march before the coffin with a joyful, even comical gait that brings to mind the exuberance of the death dances of a jazz funeral in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans.
Christian Malala, a local Sape, leads the pack, dressed in a Prince of Wales–patterned suit with wide peak lapels, slanted ticket pocket, surgeon's cuffs open and rolled up slightly, pipe protruding from his mouth, holding aloft a wooden cane that he alternately uses to twirl like a baton or brace himself during his animated pantomime of a kind of falling, twisting, drunken instability. Marching behind him is another member of his crew dressed in full Scottish regalia: wool socks with garters, plaid kilt and cap, a traditional chained leather purse dangling from his waist. Two female Sapeurs, in outfits made almost entirely of denim, also march in the funeral procession. Vivion Afifi is in a bright baby-blue suit and black pith helmet, with red bow tie and cumberbund. Afifi wears a lapel pin with an enamel-covered sepia photo of a man called André Matsoua, an important early-20th-century Congolese political figure who returned from France dressed like a European and is now recognized as the first Grand Sapeur of the Congo.
Their march is called a diatance, taken from the Lari word for walking, and it's a traditional way for Sapeurs to send off their dead. Riding shotgun in the hearse is Mouandza Jean Didier, a Paris Sape who goes by Didier Al Capone and has come home to bury his father. Though he's lived in Paris for 22 years, the men marching are his old Sapeur gang from Brazza. "This procession is a way for these friends to show me that they're sharing my soul right now," he says. "I haven't thanked them yet because I'm so moved that I can't even find the words." He looks at his friends, dressed regally to march through the streets of his neighborhood on this special, sad occasion. "They're real," he says, the highest compliment he could pay to his fellow Sapeurs.
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- Aug 26, 2005
Just got my alphas today. I think they fit perfectly for my body size. Not tight, a really nice slim, no hugging of the thigh, and a nice taper. Now to wait for my local Kohls to get the red pair of alphas so I can trade my black pair in
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- Sep 1, 2011
even though it was a glitch, i think they were gonna go on sale anyways.Originally Posted by Jordan Novice
Just got my alphas today. I think they fit perfectly for my body size. Not tight, a really nice slim, no hugging of the thigh, and a nice taper. Now to wait for my local Kohls to get the red pair of alphas so I can trade my black pair in
after they took them off the website, the relisted the remaining stock for the 'mistake' price
but glad my orders went through nonetheless before all of them were gone.
update us on how the exchange goes. i know some other guy said he was able to exchange for any other dockers model, so hopefully all kohl's stores can do the same.
storm2006
Supporter
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- Aug 20, 2001
Question regarding winter overcoats...my brother was at the store the other day and called me to inquire if I wanted to purchase a 3/4 overcoat that he saw for a good price...my question is, if you plan on wearing it in the winter over suit jackets, sportcoats, sweaters, etc. should you buy the same size as you would for a suit (40R, 42R, etc.) or should you size up? I told him to buy it but now I'm afraid it mat not fit. Thanks guys.
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- May 16, 2001
why in the world does Polo make their sweater and jacket arm openings so darn big?
I ordered a mesh cardigan, in addition to the sleeves being OD long, the openings for the wrist could fit an apple through it. Ridiculous
I ordered a mesh cardigan, in addition to the sleeves being OD long, the openings for the wrist could fit an apple through it. Ridiculous
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- Sep 24, 2008
Quick question. sounds dumb but can you tailor a varsity jacket..? or should i just get a new one overall.........
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- Mar 29, 2005
I can't imagine why not - might be really expensive, and will certainly be limited with what you can do to the leather sleeves. Probably comes down to whether the cost to alter is worth it compared to a new one.
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- Sep 24, 2008
Got it for a gift last year never wore it kinda big on me... thinking of buying a Shipley & Halmos Reversible.. called my tailor he told me he will charged about 120..
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- Feb 7, 2003
yeah I took the invoice in there. I'm not sure if that was common protocol but thought I'd give you guys the heads up since it worked for me.
bhergh
Banned
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- Dec 2, 2009
was asking since they have a no receipt no problem policy (still right?), and it shouldn't be a hassle if i was to do the same without having to pay the difference, feeling like i shouldve sized up, but will wait and see. thanks for the reply though
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- Dec 3, 2009
finally got my ludlow pants to fit the way i wanted them....wish i had taken a better pic, but i didn't want to set up the tripod....
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- Jan 28, 2010
I'll take a PM as well.
dacomeup
Supporter
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- Jan 20, 2006
I'd like a PM too.
- 2,905
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- Aug 26, 2005
Isn't it just a one time code?
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- Mar 1, 2003
I'm not the type of person that usually goes outside the basic color of pants. but i really want those docker alpha khakis in that red color. they look so sick. can anyone post pics of their fit with the khakis if possible. i would like to see how they look.
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- Oct 29, 2004
Originally Posted by ksteezy
finally got my ludlow pants to fit the way i wanted them....wish i had taken a better pic, but i didn't want to set up the tripod....
looks good...and cleaned up your beard i see
any pics of that messenger bag?
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- Sep 25, 2004
really wish i got in on that 50% ralph lauren discount. my wardrobe is HURTING.
