Sewing Up Suits for Fat Tuesday

Mardi Gras beading for the Spirit of FiYiYi Photo credit: John McCusker, The Times-Picayune

For the past several months, two men have sat side-by-side in New Orleans. With containers of beads and feathers in front of them, they tack down feathers; stitch beaded patches; and sew sequins onto an elaborate, many-layered suit fit for a chief. Their chief.

When one man gets stuck on a piece, the other takes it over. It’s all a part of the pride and tradition of Mardi Gras.

Mardi Gras Indian Culture

It’s Mardi Gras time! Everyone who knows about Mardi Gras in New Orleans knows there are parades of costumed folk. They know the fun and frivolity. But to get to that, to get to the beauty of the costumes of the paraders, there is sewing. Sewing of beads and sequins and feathers.

These men and other men around New Orleans are sewing patches and designs of Native American and African motifs to make their chief the most beautiful outfit to show off in a parade.

John McCusker / The Times-Picayune Big Chief Victor Harris shows off a beadwork mask underway in his garage.

For some it’s tradition; it’s pride; and it’s tradition of culture to continue. But whatever their reason, it’s beautiful work that is carefully and painstakingly done by a select group of men.

I love to see the care these men put into their work. To watch them defines couture and of slow sewing. There is a care and a love that goes into every stitch. It makes me smile to see the big, burly fingers picking up little beads and sequins with a needle.

“I go in the courtroom in the daytime . I come home and sew at night. This is a beautiful thing and nothing more than to go out there and have the prettiest suit, and have the prettiest tribe and have the prettiest Big Chief when we go across that river,” Spy Boy Dow Michael Edwards of the Mohawk Indians said.

Mardi Gras Indians Sewing Up Suits In Time For Fat Tuesday

To be the prettiest. Isn’t that what it’s about? Such a lovely thought while putting the care into something you’re sewing.

Images c/o http://www.nola.com/t-p/