Elegant Incursions: Fashion, Music, and Gender Dissidence in 1950s Brazzaville and Kinshasa

Abstract

Abstract: This article retraces the history of Congolese “elegance clubs,” women’s associations that worked in the realms of fashion and music in the 1950s. As they achieved huge visibility and social power in the twin cities of Brazzaville and Leopoldville (today Kinshasa), elegance clubs broadened women’s access to the city while carving out spaces for gender dissidence. This article explores their “elegant incursions” in the cities while recovering women’s voices all too rarely heard when read primarily through repressed phenomena such as prostitution. It analyzes the activity and experience of elegance clubs’ members, women radio presenters, singers, and journalists and their claims about mobility, pleasure, fame, and female respectability.