Everyone is familiar with the parade of Afro-Surinamese women wearing magnificent headscarves (angisa), voluminous skirts (koto) and wide, protruding jackets (yaki), who walk through Amsterdam on July 1st on their way to the Oosterpark. Every year the festival of Keti Koti (broken chains) is celebrated there, the abolition of slavery on that day in 1863.
Fashion and heritage from Surinam
Magnificent headscarves, voluminous skirts and wide, protruding jackets: the ‘koto’. Some see it as a typically Surinamese style of clothing to be proud of. For others it’s a hangover from slavery, which no-one wants anything to do with. Read all about this meaningful ensemble here.
It is said that wearing a koto makes you ‘grow’ and that a koto may, no must, take up space.
Traditional and modern koto, which follow the latest fashion, are worn on festive occasions like birthdays, weddings and koto-dansi (dancing parties).
Books from the 17th and 18th centuries repeatedly tell the story of how a plantation owner’s wife thought of the koto to conceal the naked bodies of their enslaved female servants, so that her white husband would not be led astray.
This story persists in more recent publications too but where it comes from isn’t known.