Haute Coture: Skirts a la mode

In Dakar, people dress.  Whether we're checking out American t-shirts (Ramirez Family Reunion 2008) or admiring Dakaroise women's "boubous"in gorgeous technicolor, fashion is serious in Dakar.

Thanks to all of the "pack light" advice we received from home, our "fashion" options are usually limited to whatever in the closet (er, backpack) is cleanest and coolest for the day.  While we're grateful for every Wednesday laundry day when we can scrub out the sweat and start again, we can't help but feel under dressed everywhere we go 100% of the time.  And, you only need to tell us once which of the clotheslines in the backyard become tightropes for the largest ants in the world, come 3PM each afternoon.

This week in particular, the pressure to be a la mode got turned up a notch.  In 10ish days (the moon has yet to settle on the exact day), Senegalese will celebrate "Tabaski", a post-Ramadan, slaughter-a-goat, dress-like-there's-no-tomorrow, festival.  It's the time of year that guarantees at least one new item of clothing for most Senegalese, because Tabaski is a time to be presentable in the eyes of God.  (And, on a clear day, many of these outfits can be seen from space.)  Like a September back-to-school shopping frenzy, Dakar moms are hitting the fabric stalls to purchase new cloth for the local tailors to turn into dresses, shirts, traditional boubous, and four piece ensembles.  Me, I just want something a little cooler than the pants I dragged across the Atlantic.

Just the tip of the fabric iceberg.

In Dakar, specialty markets exist for just about everything -- fish, artisan crafts, vegetables, knockoff Gucci watches.  The HLM Fabric Market crams literally hundreds of small stalls, each with dozens of reams of fabric, into a dense city block.  Girl, we're talking everything from green sequins, to orange eyelet, to artistic fabric dyed in every hue imaginable.  The traditional "vax" fabric is waxed, then beaten until it shines and becomes as stiff as a starched collar.

After a particularly crappy day of French, it was seriously gratifying to venture into this labyrinth and emerge an hour later after negotiating for enough meters of fabric for at least a few skirts.  As someone who is neither seamstress nor much of a shopper, this was a total coup.

With reams of fabric in hand, my neighbor Sophie took me to her local tailor. As we walked, we passed at least 30 other (though obviously worse?) tailor shops, each with one or two old Singers and (usually) a male tailor at work on a new (usually female) outfit.  

In the US, when I drop off my dry cleaning, there's usually a process for entering my phone number into the computer and a print out of my items and day of reclamation.  Here, I left three pieces of cloth in a plastic bag, I spun around once for the tailor to get a sense of my dimensions, and I gave him a deposit for the thread that he would use.  He told me to come back next Wednesday, and maybe he would be done, "inchalla" (god willing).  Today is Wednesday, and God was apparently willing.