Release Fall 2025

The phenomenon Sapeur is complex and contradictory, the history largely unexplored. Its origins are as obscure as the origins of the elegant and expensive fashion pieces themselves. What remains is the interpretation of this subcultural fashion movement, in which socio-political protest and appropriation, attraction and repulsion, aesthetics and materialism mix with unbridled joie de vivre in a captivating way. The expression of a way of life that resists all foreign domination. A lifestyle oriented towards fashionable elegance and individuality. Full of pride and self-confidence in Congolese culture, these self-proclaimed style icons attempt to master beauty, proving that true glamour is a matter of attitude. 

 

The sapeur is an illusionist with both feet firmly on the ground of a reality full of contrasts between inner freedom and outer circumstances. He is a trickster and ironist who turns the relationship between the self and the foreign on its head and presents the finest furnishings in the poorest of surroundings. He does not deny reality, but emphasises its extreme contrasts and suspends them for the duration of his appearance. The Sapeur transcends boundaries and at the same time points them out to those who have drawn them. 

 

He is a provocateur of the beautiful being, whereby appearances whereby appearance is deceptive and is not.

 

La Sape - la joi de vivre.