India has the Nehru jacket and South Africa has Nelson Mandela’s flowery Madiba shirt, but in Kenya, an attempt to throw off the colonial shackles of the western business suit is proving less successful.
A government-sponsored competition to create a national dress has resulted in a design that looks unmistakably African, but has so far failed to win over the public.
Known as the Kenyan cloak, the design features an ankle-length robe and long cloak for women, while men wear a shirt with a slashed collar and a cape across one shoulder. Both costumes come in the colours of the flag: red, green and black.
In a country where symbols of the British colonial era such as driving on the left to using a currency named the shilling, still pervade, leaders such as the president, Mwai Kibaki, remain buttoned up in suits, while ordinary Kenyans wear western-style casual clothes.
Patricia Mbela, one of the nine-strong design team, said: ”It’s been 40 years [since independence] waiting for our national garment, but now it’s finally here, people are still hanging on to a conservative way of dressing. The British did such a good job on us that we’ve forgotten our culture and heritage.”
Though some groups such as the Masai retain a strong sense of African identity, which is expressed through their distinctive scarlet cloaks and ochre body paint, Kenya has never had a single national dress.
Since independence in 1963, success has been associated with the trappings of western culture, not just wearing suits but giving children Christian names so they would be accepted at church-run schools.
In an attempt to bind together a country of 42 ethnic groups, the designers sought out features common to all of them.
They catered for Kenya’s Muslims by coming up with a ”national hijab”, adorning the women’s headscarf with African beadwork.
The search began in April, after a rumpus in Parliament last year when the speaker threw out three MPs for wearing west African robes, infringing a strict dress code which requires male MPs to wear suits and ties.
After the dispute, the government teamed up with a washing powder manufacturer to launch the competition.
From the start, it was a democratic contest with members of the public encouraged to send in sketches. The winning design was chosen by a popular vote, with hundreds of thousands of people taking part by text message, e-mail or at a national dress road show.
But popular enthusiasm has waned and one reason may be the cost. The national dress, which is not yet being mass produced, is selling for the equivalent of £44, in a country where the majority of the population live on less than 50p a day.
Instead, the Kenyan clothing market is dominated by mitumba , second-hand clothes donated to charity shops in the west and sold on cheaply by street traders in Africa.
But the Kenyan national dress is proving popular in one rather unexpected corner of the market.
”A lot of mzungu [white people] are buying the national dress,” said Kanchan Shah, owner of the Top Mode fashion boutique in Nairobi’s Hurlingham district. ”Mostly, it’s missionary people who like it.” – Guardian Unlimited Â