Auguy Okasol poses for a photo wearing an 'abacost', a front-fastening jacket, at the Okasol workshop in Kinshasa. Credits: Glody Murhabazi / AFP 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. Even its name, an abbreviation of "a bas le costume" or "down with the suit", was an act of nose thumbing. After Mobutu was toppled in 1997 following more than three decades in power, the suit fell out of favour, seen as tied to the old elite. Now, nearly three decades later, it is back. "It's the trend right now," said Serge Okasol, one of Kinshasa's best-known tailors, adding that orders were streaming in from both old and young. Tucked behind a petrol station in the centre of the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital, the Okasol workshop is reimagining the suit, stitch by stitch. After studying fashion in Paris, Serge and his brother Auguy returned…
