Auguy Okasol poses for a photo wearing a "abacost", a closed-front jacket, at the Okasol workshop in Kinshasa. Sewing machines whirred across bold fabrics at a Kinshasa atelier where Congolese tailors and their style-savvy customers have revived a suit long associated with life under a dictator.
Sewing machines whirred across bold fabrics at a Kinshasa atelier where Congolese tailors and their style-savvy customers have revived a suit long associated with life under a dictator.
The "abacost" has a closed-front jacket, often with a Mao-style collar and worn without a tie, ideal for the sweltering equatorial heat.
It was the signature attire - along with his leopard-skin hat - of president Mobuto Sese Seko, who began wearing the jacket in the 1970s when Western shirts and ties were all but outlawed.
The authoritarian ruler made it compulsory for civil servants to do the same, as a symbol of national identity and a break from the norms of the former colonial powers.
