Paul Smith’s Spring/Summer 2010 Womenswear shw was inspired majorly by the eccentric culture of the Le SAPE of the Republic of Congo. The colors he used played off the style and taste of the sapeurs.
(Source: youtube.com)
FASHION IS ART.
SAPE stands for “Société des Ambianceurs et de Personnes Elégantes” (best translation in English would be: “Society of Entertainers and Elegant People”). The concept dates back to the 1920-30’s in Congo-Brazzaville, when privileged Congolese returned stylishly and elegantly dressed from visits to the French capital. Today, the “Sapeurs” are a group or community that gather in bars or public places to discuss fashion, parade in the streets and organize fashion contests amongst themselves. They are considered as artists and most of them have a celibrity status in their cities. There are important communities of Sapeurs in European countries such as Paris or Bruxelles.
All pictures above taken by Italian photographer, Francesco Giusti.
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“I recently read about an extremely fascinating movement occurring in the Congo called Le SAPE, or Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes (Society of Tastemakers and Elegant People for you English speakers). Members of Le SAPE, called Le Sapeurs, adhere to a strict professional and moral standard while cultivating a flamboyant and impeccable style based on dandies of French origin. What’s more, they are based in slum communities throughout the Congo. A few of their axioms:
- A Congolese Sapeur is a happy man even if he does not eat, because wearing proper clothes feeds the soul and gives pleasure to the body.
- A real Sapeur needs to be cultivated and speak fluently, but also have a solid moral ethic: that means beyond the appearance and vanity of smart, expensive clothing there is the moral nobility of the individual.
- When the Sapeur expresses himself through the harmony of his clothes, he is returning his admiration to God.
- A Sapeur does not shed blood. Your clothes do all the fighting for you, otherwise you are not fit to be called a Sapeur.”
jonathancrisman.com
We let Willow cut her hair. When you have a little girl, it’s like how can you teach her that you’re in control of her body? If I teach her that I’m in charge of whether or not she can touch her hair, she’s going to replace me with some other man when she goes out in the world. She can’t cut my hair but that’s her hair. She has got to have command of her body. So when she goes out into the world, she’s going out with a command that it is hers. She is used to making those decisions herself. We try to keep giving them those decisions until they can hold the full weight of their lives.
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(On why he let Willow cut all of her hair off)
Read more: Will Smith On Allowing Willow To Cut Her Hair: ‘She Has Got To Have Command Of Her Body’ | Necole Bitchie.com
- He raises a really great point. What would it mean to believe very early that my body was mine. That it’s not for anyone or for any particular purpose other than to be mine until I decide otherwise.
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White privilege conditions white people not to see white rage. However, it makes them hyper-aware of Black threat. Newt Gingrich is white rage personified. And for it, he gets loads of applause. So is Jan Brewer, but usually we think of white rage in masculine terms. Gender stereotypes condition us not to see white women as being capable of this kind of dangerous emotional output. We reserve our notions of female anger for Black women. Such hidden race-gender logics allow Brewer to assert that she “felt threatened,” even though she was trying to handle the situation “with grace.” Now look back at the picture: who is threatening whom? Couple white rage with white women’s access to the protections that have been afforded to their gender, and you have something that looks ironically like white female privilege. Yes (yes, yes), the discourse of protection is based upon problematic and sexist stereotypes of white women as dainty and unable to care for themselves, and yes, these stereotypes have caused white women to be oppressed by white men. But remember, gender does not exist in a racial vacuum. It is performed in highly racialized contexts, and history proves that what constitutes oppression for white women in relation to white men, dually constitutes privilege for white women in relation to Black men. (I’m not spoiling for a fight today, so anybody who feels uncomfortable with such assertions should probably go read some Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics and then try again.) What I know is this: 100 years ago (less than, actually) a Black man even standing that close to a white woman would’ve gotten him lynched. (Seriously, I just discovered that even accommodationist Booker T. Washington was beaten in New York in 1911 for talking to a white woman.) And I know that if a Black woman had wagged her finger at Bush II or even Bill Clinton, we would have seen her faced down, handcuffed, with Secret Service swarming. When your race and gender grant you opportunities to be treated with dignities that others don’t have or conversely, to heap indignities on those people, that is what we call privilege.
Unchecked white rage has always been dangerous for Brown and Black folk in America. Jan Brewer’s Arizona is not safe for Brown people and by implication, not safe for Black people (Presidents included). Not only has she terrorized and racially profiled immigrant communities, but she has gutted one of the model Ethnic Studies programs for high school students in this country. If there were ever a time for Black and Brown solidarity, it is now. And hell, lest we forget, Arizona is not even safe for white women. It is the vitriolic racial climate that Brewer’s anti-immigrant, anti-Latino policies have helped to foment that led to the violence against Gabby Giffords.
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Crunktastic, White Women’s Rage: 5 Thoughts On Why Jan Brewer Should Keep Her Fingers to Herself, Crunk Feminist Collective 1/27/12 (via racialicious)
Fantastic post.
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Nat King Cole during a studio rehearsal, 1958
(Source: natkingcool, via frankiemachines)
Questlove believes D’s “eleven-year freeze” must end, not just for the artist’s sake, but for the culture’s. “I’ve told him: He is literally holding the oxygen supply that music lovers breathe,” Questlove says. “At first, it was cute—‘Oh, he’s bashful.’ But now he’s, like, selfish. I’m like, ‘Look, dude, we’re starving.’ When D starts singing, all is right with the world.”
GQ, June issue: D’Angelo’s Back
(Source: karenmaywrites)
"Rap and Hip-Hop isn't meaningful or complex!"
- 2Pac: And since we all came from a woman, got our name from a woman and our game from a woman, I wonder why we take from our women. Why we rape our women, do we hate our women? I think it's time to kill for our women, time to heal our women, be real to our women. And if we don't we'll have a race of babies that will hate the ladies that make the babies. And since a man can't make one, he has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one.
- Jay-Z: Silly rappers, because we got a couple Porsches, MTV stopped by to film our fortresses. We forget the unfortunate. Sure I ponied up a mill, but I didn't give my time. So in reality I didn't give a dime, or a damn. I just put my monies in the hands of the same people that left my people stranded. Nothin' but a bandit, left them folks abandoned. Damn, that money that we gave was just a band-aid, can't say we better off than we was before.
- Kanye West: Is it genocide? 'Cause I can still hear his momma cry, know the family traumatized. Shots left holes in his face, 'bout piranha-size. The old pastor closed the cold casket, and said the church ain’t got enough room for all the tombs. It’s a war going on outside we ain’t safe from, I feel the pain in my city wherever I go. 314 soldiers died in Iraq, 509 died in Chicago.
- Mos Def: When the average minimum wage is $5.15, you best believe you gotta find a new grind to get cream. The white unemployment rate, is nearly more than triple for black so frontliners got they gun in your back. Bubblin crack, jewel theft and robbery to combat poverty and end up in the global jail economy. Stiffer stipulations attached to each sentence. Budget cutbacks but increased police presence. And even if you get out of prison still livin join the other five million under state supervision. This is business, no faces just lines and statistics from your phone, your zip code, to S-S-I digits. The system break man child and women into figures. Two columns for who is, and who ain't niggaz. Numbers is hardly real and they never have feelings but you push too hard, even numbers got limits. Why did one straw break the camel's back? Here's the secret: the million other straws underneath it - it's all mathematics
- Lupe Fiasco: I really think the war on terror is a bunch of bullshit. Just a poor excuse for you to use up all your bullets. How much money does it take to really make a full clip. 9/11 building 7 did they really pull it. And a bunch of other cover ups. Your childs future was the first to go with budget cuts. If you think that hurts then, wait here comes the uppercut. The school was garbage in the first place, thats on the up and up. Keep you at the bottom but tease you with the uppercrust. You get it then they move you so you never keeping up enough. If you turn on TV all you see’s a bunch of “what the fucks”. Dude is dating so and so blabbering bout such and such. And that aint Jersey Shore, homie thats the news. And these the same people that supposed to be telling us the truth. Limbaugh is a racist, Glenn Beck is a racist. Gaza strip was getting bombed, Obama didn’t say shit. Thats why I aint vote for him, next one either. I’ma part of the problem, my problem is I’m peaceful. And I believe in the people.
