Putting on a Pano and Dressing Like our Grandparents: Nation and Dress in Late Colonial Luanda

Abstract

In late colonial Angola, under a politically repressive regime, cultural practice flourished. But young Angolans reached beyond the cultural vistas of Angola and the horizons of the Portuguese colonial imaginary, to create local fashions and other cultural practices that asserted both their difference and their participation in a larger world. What developed was a cosmopolitan youth culture that recognized itself in the cut of a jacket, the length of a skirt, or the tilt of the hat from elsewhere just as it donned those symbols as intimate expressions of angolanidade (Angolan-ness). As the colonial state became more repressive in response to nationalist political activities in Angola, such self-styling grew in its significance becoming both more widespread (within the capital and throughout the territory) and more meaningful. The possibilities for dress and their consequent meanings varied by gender and this could not help but have implications for the nation being forged in the seemingly apolitical practices of dress and entertainment.