Candy Dandies

Perfectly pol­ished posh men dressed in candy col­ored three piece designer suits walk the streets in the poverty stricken Congo. Known as the Sapeurs, these men dress from head to toe in designer gear to the tune of Dior, Yamamoto, Fendi, YSL, Versace, Gucci, Cardin, and Prada.

The Sapeurs belong to the exclu­sive group, Le SAPE, which stands for Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élé­gantes, or the Society of Tastemakers and Elegant People. Members of this group fol­low a strict code of con­duct which includes dress, behav­ior, and notions of morality.

Le SAPE is not a gang, they have no his­tory of vio­lence. In fact, the Sapeurs’ motto is “Let’s drop the weapons, let us work and dress ele­gantly.” Instead, the Sapeurs see them­selves as artists, and most live in dingy shacks and work two jobs to afford the pricey threads they dress them­selves in daily in the Congo.

This style of dress is not new, it’s actu­ally bor­rowed from the French and Belgian colonists who took over the Congo in the late nine­teenth cen­tury. The first famous African dandy in the Congo was pop musi­cian Papa Wemba, who really fueled the Le Saper move­ment in the 1960’s and 70’s. The trend has spread and got­ten more and more pop­u­lar since.

The bright, play­ful yet pro­fes­sion­ally dressed African dandies have become highly infu­len­tial to the fash­ion design­ers in Europe. Their influ­ence can be seen all over the 2010 runways.

Men tak­ing a lit­tle pride in their dress always impresses us. And we love con­fi­dence in bold color.

HighStreet.New York