Contesting Clothes in Colonial Brazzaville

Abstract

The significance of dress in mediating social relations was deeply rooted in the Central African experience. In pre-colonial times, clothing, jewellery and insignia conveyed identity, status, values and a sense of occasion. Those with access to European trade cloth and second-hand clothes integrated them into their dress. Central Africans had a strong sense of the “politics of costume” long before new sources and ideas of clothing arrived with colonialism.Brazzaville, the capital of French Equatorial Africa, then became the scene of opportunity, experimentation and choice. Foreign workers from West Africa, the French Antilles and the Central African coastal regions pioneered new styles which were quickly appropriated and adapted by other townspeople. Europeans, in their attire, also seemed to confirm the importance of dress and were a model for those who considered themselves évolués. In handing out clothing, European employers and missionaries had their own agenda, which was rejected by many townspeople as an autonomous fashion sense developed in Bacongo and Poto-Poto, the African districts of Brazzaville. With an entrenched monetary economy, cloth and clothing became widely available to all with cash. Styles, costs and values became issues of contention. Clothing not only symbolized change but became a vehicle for change.In the late colonial period, the sources allow a deeper understanding of the relationship of dress to controversial social issues. Clothing became an arena for contesting and asserting class, gender and generational roles.