UN (AP) – Some call it useless bureaucracy. Others praise it as an important tool for humanitarian assistance, peacebuilding and global diplomacy.
Whatever their core beliefs are, almost every national leader agrees that the United Nations is a valuable stage for making their claims before the world. And it’s a stage where no one can enter any other than their best outfits, and a fact of a vivid display at the UN General Assembly in New York this week.
For many diplomats and state officials, the General Assembly provided the opportunity to show off their clothing not only with elegant cuts and fabrics, but also with iconic messages.
The Sophonea Shale was wearing Mokorotoro, the chief of Sam Matekane, the prime minister of the Kingdom of Lesotho, a mountain kingdom trapped within South Africa. The Mocorotoro is a colorful and complex straw hat, the peak that the founders of the kingdom sought for evacuation during the foundational wars of the 19th century.
Dr. Carol Labour, a public health expert in Sierra Leone, wore a traditional manding gown in vibrant pink handmade in the Gambia “especially on this occasion.”
Bolivian Foreign Secretary Selinda Sosa Luna wore a typical bowler-style hat, silk scarf and pleated skirt from her southern hometown, Taliya. The skirt, known as Polleras, is an assertion of pride for the heritage of Bolivian indigenous peoples colonized by Spain in the 16th century.
“My clothes,” she said, “It’s my country’s identity.”
