By Clinton Duncan

GROWING up in the Caribbean I have heard the term “saga boy” mentioned time and time again. The term came up in a recent conversation and I wasn’t absolutely sure of the true essence of the expression, so I did what anyone in the 21st century would do… I googled it!

Saga boy – Noun – West Indian – Informal – A playboy: a man primarily interested in following fashion and seeking the attention of pleasure, namely women.
Upon searching the term online, it would be almost impossible to not see Peter Minshall’s ‘Tantan and Saga boy’ somewhere among the first five search results. “Tantana (1990) was a dream of harmony where the masqueraders dressed in outfits recalling “old time days”. The queen and king of the band, Tan Tan and Saga Boy, were 16-foot-tall puppets that danced together on the Savannah stage while the audience in the stands roared with delight.” (Masman: Peter Minshall – Caribbean Beat Magazine – Issue 79.)

Minshall’s vision of the saga boy casts a somewhat conflicting view of what I knew a saga boy to be as early as seven years old in 1998. I remember Mr. Thom (before the divorce) going out on a Friday night not to return until Sunday morning to prepare for church. I remember his swagger, I remember his wine-red fedora with the single iridescent green feather that he plucked from Charlie (the resident yard foul and neighbourhood morning alarm clock).

So, seeing the imagery of Minshall’s bouncy festive saga boy creates, for me, a very watered down saga boy. One who doesn’t walk with a chip and curl like Thom did; one who didn’t have a lime green pinstriped suit sewed by Georgie (the village tailor – our very own Giorgio Armani! If you didn’t have a Georgie suit in your life you were definitely not of saga boy levels!).

I say all of that to say that, there were back then, some rebellious, troubled and even dark tones to the Saga boy. Let’s face it, he was a player. A real player. The kind of player to get a tattoo of his wife’s name on his arm to show her that he was willing to let every woman know he was hers, only to cheat on her with a woman with the same name as her name. He drank alcohol, lots of it; lots of the best of it that he could buy with the US$5 he won gambling. He was even, on rare occasions, known to be aggressive.

The saga boy was a patriarch; an alpha. So after a good internet combing and conversation with grandma, it’s a bit clearer of what the saga boy reality was in the 1990s, and it was perfectly summarised in “The Emergence of the Steelband. The Steelband Movement: The Forging of a National Art in Trinidad and Tobago”, by Stephen Stuempfle (a member of an old steel band). Stuempfle described the old-school saga boy modus operandi as thus:

“…he look for the most expensive shirt, the most expensive pants and shoe. And every time you see him, he clean, well-shaved. Every two days he going for a fresh mark. And he does nothing more than pose. Just go, let’s say Green Corner. That was the headquarters for posing.”

Now as a 24-year-old man living in the West Indies, I thought to myself “is this what a Saga boy really is?” I have grown to realise that there are only so many accepted ways of self-expression for Caribbean men when it comes to clothing. The society seems to thrive on a dichotomy of hyper-masculinity and American influence, however, contrary to popular belief, there exists a homogenous style endemic to the Caribbean. When I think of home, I think of “mix up things” (yes… that’s exactly what you read) – “mix up things!” I think of my multiethnic family with an Igbo grandfather on one side, and a Portuguese grandmother and a Dougla grandfather on the other, I think of having curry at home and then walking up the street to have pepperpot ,only after picking up some metemgee from my aunt across the red bridge by the “big trench”.

I think of my house and my room, with African paintings and Indian tapestry, I think of my Chinese crystals and French La Belle music playing while I do my homework. Then I think of my closet, oh my god… my closet! I smile as I think of it and if you know anything about my eccentric, rebellious, androgynous, ostentatious personality (you can even tell from the number of adjectives I use) you would be smiling too when I mentioned my closet.

Every time I watch a movie or hear a story and hear about someone “coming out of the closet” my first instinct is to ask what they were wearing and that’s what resonates the most with me when I think of the saga boy’s style. His closet should be as “mix up” as the world around him, just like stamps in a passport it should transport and transform by its contents.

I remember being laughed at as a teenager for pairing wide-legged acid washed jeans and a fire red matador bolero jacket. Just imagine it: five foot, eight inches in high school, somewhere close to 120 pounds, glasses and the hippest outfit ever in a place that just couldn’t appreciate personal style. I am afraid I must admit I was ashamed of my decision.

Now, I am hit with a wave of nostalgia when reflecting on the animal prints in Dolce and Gabbana SS 2017, or the Caribbean schoolboy chic shown at Balenciaga SS 2017, or the mix of colonial style shirts and pants resembling Indian Caribbean immigrant wear at Haider Ackerman SS2017… or even the bold banana picker realness that came through Missoni SS 2017 or the tie-dyed prints at Issey Miyake.

The thing is that most of these fashion houses may not intentionally reference the Caribbean but the fact that these pieces can be pulled out from a show and identified by a “Caribbean” aesthetic is the very evidence of a homogenous Caribbean menswear style. One that is, well- at the risk of sounding repetitive- MIXED UP!

The Caribbean male has many style influences, given to him or rather presented for his inspiration by slavery, indentureship, colonialisation and the mass migration of Caribbean nationals on the turn of the 60s. Cargo pants, Panama hats, Kangols, Fedoras. Scissortail suits, petticoats, Indian silk shirts, Italian pocket squares. If I remember correctly, grandad once had alligator shoes from Australia. Chinese jade bracelets! I still have the one I stole from him in Third Form. English neckties, now that I think of it, grandad had over 60 ties but never really wore them. He said the climate was too hot, and it made more sense to wear a shirt in his suit and have the first four buttons opened exposing his chest hair (for breeze).

At least that’s what he said, we all knew it was to show off his masculinity for, you guessed it, women. Grandma said he didn’t lie, and that the women were indeed breeze, because they just passed through for a moment to cool him down, rob him of his Friday pay and head South # Queen Of Shade. The saga ‘man’ really was a global man. Even if not in his travels, he surely made a point of his global wardrobe. Luckily the Caribbean was/is a melting pot of cultures so it was/is easy for him to steal and borrow from all the different cultures he encountered.

We pull from all around us; our food, our music, our religion, our history of slavery, indentureship and a struggle for independence, you might say it’s just clothes, or I am trying to make this deeper than it actually is, but we have come a long way, not only by a matter of time but some of our ancestors literally came across oceans and seas.

Our style is our outward expression of the artist in us. Some of us are static artists, some of us are rebellious, some (or most]) of us are well, once again- mixed up. But if we are true to our imagination with diversity and a little deviance, without fear, cowardice or intimidation, regardless of where we are in the world; so long as we use the multifaceted and multiethnic approach of being a global citizen, a global artist, a global rebel, then, just then, can we truly consider ourselves ‘saga men’!