One Outfit At a Time: Qaddafi Scares the Pants Off World Leaders

Alright, I know the Daily has taken deserved heat recently from our very own Matt Sprague for its publication of sartorial silliness, but what I am about to show you is actually funny. Or scary. You decide. Behold, Vanity Fair*‘s*Dictator Chic: Fashion, Qaddafi-Style.


Each photo is better than the next. He’s like a crazed rockstar! He’s worse than [Steven Tyler](http://dietrichthrall.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/tyler-steven.jpg) and [Amy Winehouse](http://stupidcelebrities.net/content/amy_winehouse0423081_nc.jpg) put together. Former Japanese Prime Minister [Junichiro Koizumi](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v642/shakespeares_sister/shakes3/yeesh.png) has gotten some guff for his long hair, but oh man, does Qaddafi do him ten better. The fact than Koizumi is an Elvis (his birthday twin!)[ fan extraordinaire](http://www.elvis-collectors.com/japan1.htm) has to excuse him a little, anyway. Plus, unlike Qaddafi, he knows what both a democracy and a hairbrush are.

The Telegraph‘s David Blair says that

In his four decades as Libya’s ‘Brother Leader’, Colonel Muammar [Q]adaffi has gone from being the epitome of revolutionary chic to an eccentric statesman with entirely benign relations with the West.

*Entirely *benign? That’s most certainly debatable. Is he still “Mad Dog” Qaddafi? Unfortunately, there’s not all together a bad chance.

I wish we English-speakers could decide on how to spell his name, by the way. But in any event, Qaddafi-Gaddafi-Khadafi has really let himself go. His clothes, and his 90 minute speech at the UN in September confirm his (continued) lunacy. At that fateful speech, the  New York Timesreported,

[Qaddafi] offered to move the United Nations headquarters to Libya because leaders coming [to New York] had to endure jet lag and because the understandable security against another attack on New York by Al Qaeda was too stringent. And he repeated his longstanding proposal that Israel and the Palestinian territories be combined into one state called Isratine.

What, pray tell, would fashion look like in Isratine if Qaddafi had his way?

Look out for the gilded Qaddafi in the The New Yorker’s fascinating portfolio of photographs taken by the single-named Platon, who set up shop at this same United Nations meeting.

*T, *the New York Times style magazine, also reported on Qaddafi’s lunatic ensembles earlier this year; their montage of Qaddafi fashion faux pas does not include his bombardier jacket, but does have a great close-up of his DIY accessories. Their post also includes one of my favorite types of comments of all time, the Comment Poem (no Al Gore writing poetry). This apt verse is from a certain Ms. Karen Lyons Kalmenson:

mumbler el qaddafi
icon of fashion?
malcontent who
does hatred with
such passion
i only wish
at this junction
his biggest faux pas
was his
wardrobe malfunction