After Jacinda Ardern, Politics Will Never Look the Same
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Loading... - Johnson Hannah
- 03 Feb 2023
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For once, a politician who wasn’t afraid of fashion.
Last September, Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand who announced recently that she was stepping down after almost six years in power, did something government leaders rarely do. She modeled in a fashion show.
Wearing a high-neck cape glimmering with what appeared to be electrified seed pods over a long blue dress and bare feet, she stood on a runway for the opening event of World of Wearable Art, an annual international design competition in Wellington that was restarting after a two-year pandemic hiatus. She looked sort of like an alien priestess from the Marvel cinematic universe, and also like it was no big deal.
Except, of course, it was. And not just because it attracted attention (“What? The PM? Modeling?”) to the reopening of an important economic sector.
Ms. Ardern may have been known on the international stage for many things as a leader, but her wardrobe was rarely among them. She was known, for example, for getting her country successfully through Covid; for her deft handling of a mass shooting at two mosques; for espousing “kindness politics”; for becoming, at 37, one of the youngest prime ministers ever elected in New Zealand; for having a baby while in office; and now, for being one of the rare officials who resigned of their own accord. Read More…
