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 *Updated. I have added so much on to this post in the last 3.5 hours that a new post time is warranted.

critic’s notebook

The Man in the Olive Green Tee

How Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky transformed the meaning of a piece of cotton.

 

(She has read The Golden Thread, How Fabric Changed History (so have I)).

By Vanessa Friedman

 

In the beginning, [Biblical: God created Zelensky and Putin] it was just a T-shirt: basic, olive green; the kind worn under military fatigues or hauled out from the bottom of a wardrobe for workouts and weekends. ...

PAUSE: Actually, Ms. Friedman, before the beginning there was the appeaser-in-chief suit.

 That was Jan. 28 when Zelensky was acting the part of Neville Chamberlain. 

From two other writers for your employer on that date:

 

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian officials sharply criticized the Biden administration Friday for its ominous warnings of an imminent Russian attack, saying they had needlessly spread alarm...
...
“In my opinion, this is a mistake.”-God's Gift.

As the West awaited Mr. Putin’s next step, Ukrainian officials expressed increasing annoyance with the Biden administration as they stepped up their calls for calm.
...

He claimed then that Ukrainian intelligence was superior to America's!:

“If you look only at the satellites you will see the increase in troops and you can’t assess whether this is just a threat of attack or just a simple rotation,” [Zelensky] said. “Our professional people look deep into it.”

 

Pardon the interruption, Ms. Friedman, carry on with your fashion analysis. UN-FUCKING-PAUSE

 

But over the last four weeks, as the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has shed his former navy suits, white shirts and ties — the uniform of the politician — for the T-shirt, wearing it in his daily videos to his country; in his speeches to the European Parliament, to the British Parliament, to the American Congress; in his interview over the weekend with CNN (and his widely tweeted Zoom call with supporters Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis). It has become something more: a symbol of the strength and patriotism of the Ukrainian people, a host of values and purpose packed into an outline everyone knows.

...it will be one of the defining images of the conflict. It is a metaphor in cloth [Right out of The Golden Thread] for the growing narrative of a Russian Goliath and Ukrainian David, of hubris and heroism, that is being played out in blood and arms.

The T-shirt is a reminder of Mr. Zelensky’s origins as a regular guy...

That's getting closer. Not "a T-shirt," The T-Shirt (you should capitalize S). Is it just one? Does he have Ashton wash it daily or would that ruin the "regular guy" smell?

...a connection between him and the citizen-soldiers fighting on the streets; a sign he shares their hardship.

Bullshit. As you say down below, it's propaganda FOR FOREIGN CONSUMPTION, not about "connecting" with his people.

...He could, as the commander in chief, have remained in his formal wear, as Churchill did when he visited the bombed-out sites of Coventry in his black homburg, overcoat and bow tie...

...Zelensky choose instead to adopt what may be the single most accessible garment around — the T-shirt —is as clear a statement of solidarity with his people as any of his rhetoric.

Bullshit.

To say that Zelensky, a former actor, clearly understands how clothing speaks to character and can be used as a form of propaganda is not to demean his position or role in the history of the moment.

Oh but it is "to demean his position and role in the history of the moment"! I will say that every damn day. 

When is Zelensky being "real" and when is he acting, Ms. Friedman? Was he "acting" in the suit on Jan. 28? Was he "acting" in The T-Shirt in his first, haunted, hunted, shifting, nervous, scared video after American intelligence was proved (unfortunately) accurate and the war began when he said Russians were in Kyiv and he was their "No. 1 target and his family No. 2"? Was he acting the next night on the streets when he projected calm with his cabinet all dressed in olive drab?

It is propaganda, yes, propaganda and war go hand-in-hand, propaganda is manipulative--and Zelensky is doing it at the expense of people's LIVES, including NON-UKRAINIAN LIVES. He is doing it so that--as he directly stated yesterday, there would have been no war if Ukraine had been a NATO member--OTHER PEOPLE FIGHT HIS WAR FOR HIM. That is unconscionable.

After all, dress, like music and films and literature, has long been used to deliver political messages and sway opinion. ...It was exemplified by Fidel Castro’s preference for the army green military shirt and cap as his uniform...

 

Yes...YES, Some people have made the connection to Fidel! And that's ok with you, huh Ms. Friedman? May I call you Vanessa? No? Very well. Ms. Friedman, you are a "critic", no? This is a "critic's notebook" it says at the top. You are a fashion or pop culture critic? Not a strategy-of-war critic, am I right? That's okay! You can call me Ben The Idiot Blogger.

 

...and the Mao suit as adopted by Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party, [And Uncle Alf! And Uncle Joe!] both choices meant to conflate the leaders and their populace. 

 

Also, [She realizes she has got her teet in a ringer: "Oh, I have only dictators I am aligning Zelensky with and Fidel and Maoie were not always 'conflated' with the populace! "] Also, George W. Bush landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in full military drab flight suit to declare victory in the Iraq war.

 

Dress is one of the ways we connect to people in circumstances beyond our imagining because it renders them familiar. Consider how many images of extremists [Ms. Friedman's editors rightly changed "extremists" to "protesters"] have become known by the clothes in the pictures:...the “man in the white shirt,” standing in front of the tanks as they rolled into Tiananmen Square in 1989...

Oh yes, it was the white shirt, not the "Lone Protester" or "Tank Man" standing up to a column of tanks. If it had been olive it would have blended in with the color of the tanks. You think that's why that image became so iconic, his white shirt? Not the column of tanks and on "Lone Protester" standing in front of them?

...More than examples of individual heroism (though they are that), they become examples of the heroism that is possible in all individuals.

 

How'd the "man in the white shirt" come out in the long run? Not too well, as I recall. More to the point: how'd the protest that he symbolized turn out? Not too well, as I recall.