He may have been sporting a jacket made of eye-popping fabric designed by his wife – but there’s no way the tough-talking President Robert Mugabe was giving up his red power tie.
Source: Mugabe wears jacket designed by Grace (but hangs onto that red tie) | News24 2016-12-16
Harare – He may have been sporting a jacket made of eye-popping fabric designed by his wife – but there’s no way the tough-talking President Robert Mugabe was giving up his red power tie.
The 92-year-old Zimbabwean president is known for his sober Savile Row suits so the black, yellow and red blazer emblazoned with his face that he wore to open the Zanu-PF conference on Friday was certainly a distraction.
But that red tie is a real constant.
Mugabe wore a red tie on Wednesday too, paired with a red striped shirt at a central committee meeting in Harare. Google “Mugabe red tie” and you’ll find he regularly wears one on his birthday (this year paired with a red kerchief).
Studies have been done to try to determine exactly what message a red tie sends out, especially when worn by a politician.
One school of thought says a red tie exudes confidence and shows the wearer “means business”. More recent research – this time conducted by Durham University in the UK in 2015 – says it can make a wearer look “aggressive and dominant”.
Friday’s suit was fashioned out of fabric designed by fashion-loving Grace Mugabe. She’s well-known for her shopping forays in Dubai, Hong Kong and Western capitals.
The first lady told delegates at Masvingo showgrounds, where the conference is being held, that she “sketched this [design] on a paper”. She boasted that it showed Zimbabwe’s ‘teacup’ shape.
“This Zimbabwe is like a teacup, we all drink from this teacup. We are all agriculturalists by nature. So takaisa chibage (we put maize) – that’s our staple food. We also put the country flower – the flame lily….And there we have our leader we believe in… VaMugabe,” Grace Mugabe said, describing the fabric.
She was wearing an outfit made from the new fabric, paired with a large silver cross pendant.
COMMENTS
Does Grace, the ‘agriculturist’ know that her staple food – maize – is indigenous to North America and was brought here by the dreaded colonialists?
Red for danger or for stop ‘I don’t know what I’m doing’
this article is slightly more interesting than the 2 and 3 minutes updates we got from the Zanu PF so-called conference