pagne, pagne, and more pagne!

"You can be too rich and too thin,

but you can never be too well read or too curious about the world."

~Tim Gunn

As a group, we trainees have developed an addiction to pagne. Pagne-buying trips to the market have quickly become part of my weekly routine here. So far, I’ve only had one skirt and two dresses made, but I’ve bought five pagnes which are waiting to be made into a skirt, dress, shirt, etc. The possibilities are endless!

Pagne (pawn-yuh) is what all Togolese women wear. Most of the time I see them just wrapped around their waists as a long skirt. You can buy it at the market and then take it to a couturier in town to get clothes made. One pagne equals two yards of fabric and can range in price from 1,500cfa to more than 5,000cfa; it all depends on the quality of the fabric. 500cfa is about one U.S. dollar, so that’s only 3-10 dollars. At the couturier it usually costs 1,000cfa for a skirt and 2,000-3,000cfa for a dress. That’s less than 10 USD for the fabric and the production!

my pagnes

I’m looking forward to creating a whole new wardrobe for myself here. It’s hard sometimes to describe exactly what I want, and things can get lost in translation. So it is best to draw the design, show a picture, or bring in clothes to the couturier that you want to replicate. Designing clothes in my notebook makes me feel like I’m on Project Runway, only without the judges and the motivating Tim Gunn, telling me to “make it work.”

a traditional boubou

I love my couturier. She and her husband own a shop where they sew clothing for men and women. Last time I was there I met their goat, who is about to have six babies! Usually they only have three, so she is special. I’ve seen her walking around the neighborhood for a while, but now she’s getting ready to pop them out. This goat reminds me of my dogs back home, and how they would always  crawl under my mom’s desk while she was working.

Buying pagne, sketching clothing designs, and having outfits made has become one of my favorite things to do here. Togo has a thriving textile industry that is known for its beautiful selection of good quality pagne and Batik prints, and I plan to take full advantage of this over the next two years.