To be cool in Congo is to be a ”sapeur.”
Down by the Congo River on Sunday afternoons, Africa`s rebels without a cause speed up to the Rapids Cafe, astride their mopeds and dressed in $1,000 suits.
In Congolese slang, ”la sape” (pronounced sap) is La Societe des Ambianceurs et Personnes Elegantes, or the society of atmosphere setters and elegant people.
For the young sapeur, the only ”ism” to follow is narcissism. And his manifesto is the society pages of glossy French-language publications.
For Congolese who cannot afford this Parisian fantasy world, ”les Parisiens” bring Paris chic back home.
”Yves Saint Laurent suits, Yamamoto jackets, Marcel Lassance suits, Gresson shoes, Cacharel pants,” said one sapeur, Rufin Ngakouba, running down a shopping list of designer clothes.
Seated at a prominent table on a recent Sunday afternoon at the Rapids Cafe, Ngakouba, 23 years old, was the picture of ”sape” in his gray linen suit with padded shoulders, purple and white striped cotton shirt, mauve socks, black Jean Marc Wesson loafers.
”It`s like a chef preparing a dish,” the boulevardier said of his attire. ”People watch and say, `mmmm . . .` ”
During most of the year, Ngakouba lives in the 18th Arrondissement in Paris, a neighborhood with such a large African population that kiosks sell newspapers from the Ivory Coast.
Every year, in late July and early August, Ngakouba tours the end-of-summer sales in Paris and finds clothes to sell to fashion-conscious friends.
”It`s a plague,” admitted Edmund Capionne, dressed in a modishly baggy linen shirt and oversized blue jeans with red suspenders. ”People want to dress so well that they will steal from their parents.”
With outfits easily costing three times the average monthly salary here of $300, sapeurs resort to renting, or ”mining,” their clothes to friends for a night. A 24-hour rental for a designer suit is about $25.
At other sapeur gathering spots here, like the Boomerang and Cafe Creole, one commonly sees at least one young man walking in a studied strut: body tilted back, left hand thrust in a suit pocket and a bored look in the eye. After harvesting the maximum amount of admiring glances, the poseur in the $1,000 suit will sit down with friends and nurse a $1 bottle of beer for the rest of the evening. –
