It’s holiday season again, which means we are confronted by that age-old question: what should I wear to the defense of the free world? Is the attire to be business casual or is it acceptable to stop genocide in a cashmere sweater with a nice pair of trousers? Decisions, decisions. There is a certain coterie of people who seem exercised that the President of Ukraine insists on turning up to such events without a suit and tie.
His cities are being bombed daily, he must consider strategies to prevent the destruction of his country, and he has ceremonies to attend to honor those who have given their lives to defend their land. Yet he can’t even find time to choose a tie color or get a suit fitted? The audacity. What on Earth is going on?
Which brings me at once to the matter of obvious importance and urgency. What exactly is the appropriate dress for the defense of freedom?
For some sartorial guidance, it might be worth seeking the advice of others who have stood alone in freedom’s darkest hours. And there’s no better place to look than on the White House lawn in December 1941. There we find Winston Churchill in one of his famous ‘siren suits’ (endearingly called ‘rompers’ by his advisors), looking up at him in bemusement is Roosevelt’s Scottish Terrier, Fala.
Churchill was on the move, running this way and that to shore up support for the fight against the Nazis. To do that, you need something comfortable and practical, but it should also reflect your position as a wartime leader, a person uninterested in fitting in to the convention of the moment, but rather leading the charge for efforts and energies that are not easily applied in a suit and tie.
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Churchill’s siren suits were made from green velvet, bottle green to be more precise, and he designed them himself. He boasted that he could put on the one-piece clothing in half a minute, the sort of thing you could don in an air raid or when called upon to leap out of bed and take to action on the world stage. During the war, he had several made, including one in a strangely militarily incongruous red velvet.
It is not immediately apparent that a romper suit would look well on Zelensky; there is a certain rotundness required to carry that convincingly. Instead, the Ukrainian leader has opted for green military fatigues and a sweatshirt often sporting the Ukrainian tryzub – a sort of 21st century version of Churchill’s approach to wartime wardrobe in international matters.
That this dress sense causes friction is, to be frank, astonishing. To be more pointed, that the Western world is being run by febrile senior politicians, commentators or advisors who get unnerved when someone arrives to ask for military support without a suit and tie is precisely why we are all in this sorry mess in the first place and why the future of the democratic world is currently under a very dark cloud indeed.
Only a total lack of perspective and priority would cause anyone to get heated about dress code when the bombs are falling. Let’s just hope there are enough ties to go around if this should escalate into a nuclear apocalypse. I can only imagine the collective screams of horror and derision should any national leader turn up to the end of the world in a regular fit casual Gingham shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
Back to Churchill. Although his ‘onesie’ (another more modern name for his siren suits) took on a certain panache in their velvet green, and tailored by the up-market London-based Turnbull & Asser, they were inspired by Victorian boiler suits, intended to be one-piece coverings that would protect from the dirt and grime of locomotives.
Churchill was not insensible to this optical similarity. Although not a literal boiler suit, the simulacrum he wore was intended to conjure up the image of a person at work, and dirty work at that. At pivotal moments, from planning D-Day to visiting Roosevelt, or Stalin at Yalta for that matter, he was to be found in his garb.
Yet another function of clothing is to express solidarity with one’s fellow fighters. Many took Churchill’s lead and women in particular were soon to be found wearing similar outfits. Between the formality of the business suit and the grease-covered reality of the factory overall, Churchill’s clean green siren suits sat neatly between, a nod to decorum in the presence of world leaders, but a decisive lean towards the working realities of war and solidarity with those on the front line.
As clothes rationing intensified in the early 1940s, when Britain found itself isolated and under incessant bombardment, the practicalities of a one-piece garment that could serve the purposes of protection at work and cover the body in short order before the rush to the air raid shelter showed its worth. When reaching the end of use, the garments could be cut up and turned into trousers and shirts. Their versatility lay at the heart of a wartime recycling and rationed economy.
Similarly, Zelensky’s general attire is sufficient to look respectable, but it is a definitive tilt towards the image of a man uninterested in looking like he’s turned up to a corporate board meeting. It expresses a unity with what many men of his age are doing back at home – fighting. Perhaps the source of irritation from his detractors is that it reminds them that here is an individual with bigger fish to fry than buying suits, a man commanding respect through action and resolve, and not through the cut of their collar.
‘Why doesn’t Zelensky wear a suit?’ asked a user on the internet site Quora. The mind boggles at what is going through the mind of one who can sit down in front of a keyboard and type this question, expecting a serious analytical explanation. I’m glad to say, most of the responses are what one might hope for.
Others are more deranged. ‘Why does Ukrainian President Zelensky dress like a homeless person?’ asks another nomadic denizen of the internet.
Let me take a guess – to remind people that he’s currently engaged in a war that might deny him and 40 million other Ukrainians a home if the rest of the world doesn’t stop worrying about suits and ties and instead gets down to the practical business of helping Ukraine.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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