Immaculate in her Dolce & Gabbana suit, Iye Bilele expertly hops over a blocked drain on Yves Saint Laurent stilettos. She bends and gingerly strokes a lame monkey tethered to a rickety shelf unit in the humble compound that doubles as her family home and bar.



Bilele lives where she was born, in the musical heart of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital, Kinshasa. Hers is one of the five streets that make up Molokai, a musicians’ village commune created by Papa Wemba, the king of Congolese rumba, who when he died on stage in May left an army of grieving dandies – the sapeurs.

Members of the Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elégantes (Sape), the group Wemba created in the 1970s, will pay $1,000 for a designer suit when they don’t have a mattress to sleep on, and spend more on laundry bills than on food. They adore Yohji Yamamoto and Versace and spend hours thinking and talking about outfits.

Iye Bilele, a sapeuse, in Kinshasa. Photograph: John Bompengo/The Guardian

Sapeurs were originally male, but there is a growing cadre of women who don menswear and prance along rubbish-strewn alleys, succeeding in their number one goal: to turn heads. These are the sapeuses, and they delight in extravagance. London’s Brunei gallery will host an exhibition about them this summer.

“You see the way I’m dressed? Even little children talk about me. I’m the most beautiful woman in the world. I’m a European!” shouts Mama Clementine, whose short hair is dyed bright yellow and who is wearing lipstick only on her bottom lip. Despite the intense heat she is wearing one big coat and carrying two others on hangers.

By way of greeting each other, the dandies perform an elaborate ritual of stamping and cracking their heels together. One wears his coat-tails tucked into the front of his trousers. Another is in black sequins, “Bon jour” emblazoned on his chest. Almost all of them wear Weston shoes, and several have pipes.

Mama Clementine steps around a puddle as she carries a coat on a hanger. Photograph: John Bompengo/The Guardian

The DRC is not an easy country to live in. Dozens of people have died in political violence after the president, Joseph Kabila, refused to step down at the end of his second term in December.

In particular it is not easy for women, who as well as enduring grinding poverty face an epidemic of sexual violence. Sape may seem frivolous but it can provide a lighthearted escape.

Mama Clementine tosses her head back and dramatically throws down her spare coats. “They’re very expensive in Europe but I don’t care, I can just drop it in the dirt,” she calls, trying to drown out the others’ bragging. “I have too many of them anyway.”

A well-known sapeur, Papa Griffe, says Mama Clementine is the doyenne of sapeuses. “In the history of women sapeurs, she’s the first and the oldest. She’s the same age as Papa Wemba,” he says.

Mama Clementine, whose real name is Clementine Gombe, says she knew she was a sapeuse from the age of 11, before they existed, and before she had ever been to Kinshasa. For all her showing off, she admits: “I don’t have much money. I’m not rich or anything, but when I get money, I spend it on clothes.”

A sapeuse in Molokai. Photograph: John Bompengo/The Guardian

Her eight children encourage her passion and occasionally give her money to buy new outfits. She is Christian, and sweeps her church in designer garb, though this does not stop her from following the “religion of sape” too.

This religion has some overlaps with Christianity and is muddled, to say the least, but there are two main commandments, say Mama Clementine’s band of sapeurs: thou shalt not wear thy trousers sagging low, and thou shalt not wear Chinese-made clothes.

“Jesus had a very expensive tunic,” one explains. Sapeurs frequently bring up this “unique tunique” as proof of Jesus’s dedication to sape. God is also considered a sapeur, as evidenced by the story that the first thing He did when Adam and Eve ate the apple, even before throwing them out of Eden, was to replace their pitiful figleaves with clothes.

Though Jesus is considered unbeatable in the art of wearing clothes, the biblical King Solomon was apparently the original sapeur. He is said to have worn Valentino clothes long before Valentino was born, kindly making the Italian designer famous.

A sapeuse. Photograph: John Bompengo/The Guardian

“Since then the price of Valentino clothes has come down, so we can afford them,” says Songa Maguy, a sapeuse who calls herself Mama Africa and is dressed in a billowing silver cape that she twirls around herself at regular intervals. Underneath she is wearing men’s trousers and the ubiquitous Westons.

She does have some women’s clothes, she says – “a snakeskin dress or two” – but prefers to dress “comme les garçons”, despite not always getting a positive reception.

“Some say: ‘Mama Africa, are you a man or a woman? What are those clothes you’re wearing?’ I don’t care. It’s the story of clothes.”

Some sapeuses face homophobia because of dressing like men, whether they are gay or not. Iye Bilele has experienced this a lot. Her older brother, Guy-Guy Nzali, says: “We live with her. We think [the way she dresses] is normal. But there are people who don’t see it as a good thing, they think she is a lesbian. Some think she is, others just say it as an insult. People have asked us if she is.”

Bilele ignores them. “Some people think so. It doesn’t hurt me, because I’m not,” she says, sitting on a rough chair in her family’s compound, torn curtains at the windows. Behind her, her sister-in-law scrubs children’s worn-out trainers on a dilapidated old table, looking tired in an old stretched T-shirt.

“People are usually very happy when I dress like a man,” she continues. “And I like the religion too much – I like to look smart. Today, I’m wearing Weston shoes, a Gabbana suit, and my hat and bag are from Zara. My outfit cost about $2,000. I have a lot of clothes – men and women’s, but I don’t have a house or car or anything like that. But I’ll spend $150 on a shirt.”

Far from feeling resentful of the way she spends her money, her family are proud to have a sapeuse living among them, Nzali says, using a very local expression to express his admiration.

“When there are clothes, we beat them. But we don’t beat them like her.”