Move over, President Zelensky, Ahmed al-Sharaa is now the most talked-about world leader — at least among fashion watchers.
Menswear was never the same after President Kennedy showed up to his 1961 inauguration hatless. Hippies would soon shun barbershops and hat manufacturers went broke. A Broadway musical, “Hair,” symbolized the era and demonstrated how fashion cues from national leaders can at times usher in major societal changes.
Mr. Zelensky’s iconic olive green T-shirt became the envy of world leaders aiming to project man-of-the-people images. When the decisively elitist President Macron tried to emulate his Ukrainian counterpart by sporting rustic clothes, the French press ridiculed his attempt at authenticity.
Not all down-fashion clothing, then, projects the image politicians crave. Seeking Iowa caucus victories in 2016, nearly all presidential candidates donned plaid shirts and jeans and posed on tractors at county fairs with pigs and cows. A New York billionaire, Donald Trump, declined to act like a country boy, instead landing in Iowa in a private helicopter while wearing one of his signature suits and overly long ties.
Trump narrowly lost that Iowa contest to Senator Cruz, but he eventually won the Republican nomination and beat Senator Clinton, who shed her customary pantsuit in Iowa for a “blue gingham blouse,” as the New York Times described it. Shunning local fashions in favor of an as-seen-on-TV image may have convinced Iowans that Trump “tells it as like is,” as one voter cited by the Times described him.
Mr. Sharaa, in contrast, is at a point where he can hardly afford to simply maintain his image. Like that famous diagram that depicts five stages of human evolution, social media memes chart the fashion changes of a man once known by a nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Joulani.
During his days with Al Qaeda more than a decade ago, Mr. Joulani changed out of his traditional Arab garb in favor of various forms of battle fatigues. After capturing Damascus this month, though, he renamed himself Mr. Sharaa and started sporting casual blazers. Now, as a well-suited leader, he is capturing the hearts of regional and world dignitaries.
Already, a $10 million bounty on Mr. Joulani’s head has been removed from the Department of State’s website. Mr. Sharaa’s name change and choice of garb seem to be helping him raise funds for rebuilding Syria. Further, his decision to wear a tie is one of the signals that he is turning his back on the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The mullahs shun ties as un-Islamic symbols of Western decadence. As Israel’s Kan news notes, though, there are nuances in Tehran’s no-tie look. So-called reformists prefer open-collared white dress shirts, signaling that they could wear ties but choose not to. Hard-liners opt for Nehru-style collars that leave no place for the despised accessory.
Prime Minister Nehru of India became a fashion sensation in the 1960s. Sporting a hip-length jacket with a mandarin-style collar, he inspired the London mod crowd. Popularized by the Beatles, among others, the Nehru jacket attracted Westerners to Indian and other Asian cultures. Today’s yoga mat-carrying hipsters might want to thank the Indian leader for his fashion statement.
The 1960s also attracted Westerners to, as the author Tom Wolf called it, “revolutionary chic.” Berets such as those worn by Che Guevara and battle fatigues sported by Fidel Castro inspired fashionistas who were oblivious to the atrocities that remain a staple of the Cuban regime to this day.
Similarly, today’s street protesters are most likely unaware of the origin of the checkered keffiyehs they wear so proudly. Named after the Iraqi town of Qufa, the cloth bound by a rope for generations was worn by farmers and horsemen across the Mideast, protecting them from wind, sand, and sun.
In the early 1960s an Egyptian-born, Soviet-educated terrorist, Yasser Arafat, turned the keffiyeh into a symbol of his campaign to replace the Jewish state of Israel with an Arab one, Palestine. Arafat arranged his keffiyeh in a unique shape to loosely emulate a map of Palestine, which in his mind stretched from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea.
It is unclear if Arafat, who founded the Fatah party, would approve of Hamas, a group that college students of a certain age now cheer with “from the river to the sea” chants. The fashion statement he popularized, though, has become a symbol of street scenes that Western governments are yet to fully comprehend, or contain.
On Christmas Eve, Mr. Sharaa announced that the birth of Jesus would be marked as a national holiday in the new Syria. On the same day, though, a Christmas tree was set on fire at a Syrian city, Hama. We are yet to learn whether the Damascus leader’s switch to well-tailored suits represents a real transformation, or could this be a case of the proverbial emperor’s new clothes?
