Go back and get it

In Brazzaville, a man in a mint green double-breasted suit walks like a blade. Children part for him. His shoes are so clean they seem theoretical. There’s a cigarette in one hand, and a gold ring gleaming like it has something to say. This is Sapology! An art form, an elegance dialect, a beautiful fuck-you to postcolonial wreckage.

It began with a remix of French suits with Congolese spirits. The body dressed not for survival but for cinema. These men, Sapeurs, don’t just wear clothes; they summon spirits. Silk shirts, cufflinks, canes, and color schemes pulled from dreams or a fever.

This is what happens when beauty becomes resistance and fashion a counter-spell.

Flash now to Harlem, 1986. A storefront open at 3 a.m. Floodlight buzzing. Inside: leather, monograms, hunger. Dapper Dan is cutting up Gucci and Louis Vuitton like a surgeon, turning logos into armor. The fashion houses call it theft. Harlem calls it prophecy.

Dan’s clients were rappers, dealers, fighters. Kings with no crowns, so he stitched them. You don’t wait for permission when you’re not supposed to be in the building. Dan's clothes looked like wealth before the industry caught up. And when they did, it was too late, the message had been spoken.

What’s a jacket, if not a manifesto?

0.03 seconds lightspeed travel from Harlem to Beirut. The economy’s up in smoke, climbing towards a fractured skyline. Yet on the street: fresh fades, flawless manicures, Balenciaga sneakers, matte black M1s with unpaid insurance. Everyone's in the game. Clothes styled like exit strategies. There’s no money, but there’s substance, which is its own currency. Maybe the only one left.

Here too, the aesthetic is a survival mechanism. If the state won’t provide structure, we’ll dress like it does.

Adornment isn’t vanity, it’s code. A ring is a memory. A chain is a signal. Jewelry lives at the intersection of skin and myth. What we wear holds what we survive. Ask the Sapeur with the crimson tie. Ask the Beiruti with the diamond ring. Ask Dan in his sequined Met Gala suit marked with Sankofa: go back and get it!

written by Amer Chamaa.