Dream and Drama: The Search for Elegance among Congolese Youth

This paper deals with fashion (la Sape) and its use among Congolese youth as a vehicle to borrow new identities. La Sape is an ambiguous adventure, a sort of Baudelairian voyage, that leads Congolese youth (Sapeurs), not only from a third world city to Paris and Brussels, but also from social dereliction to psychological redemption. It authenticates and validates their quest for a new social identity which the African city has failed to provide its overwhelming population of youth. It is, above all, a study of the interactions between clothing and social (and cultural) identities and the transfer of meaning from one to the other, and vice versa. La Sape allows the Sapeur to define the boundaries that separate him from the Other, but also serves as a defined social territory which distinguishes the Sapeurs from the rest of society. Ultimately, la Sape is redolent with political meanings. It is a political statement which, I argue in this paper, is directed toward the West, the former colonizer, as well as toward the authoritative structures of the African state. I also demonstrate that this political discourse is inseparable from the egotistical and hedonistic dimensions of la Sape.