Finance

Zelensky Proves It: Real Leaders Wear T-Shirts

Volodymyr Zelensky is brave. He is steadfast. He is eloquent, and passionate. And most of the time, he is wearing either an olive drab or brown T-shirt.

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ukraine-g6db170881_1920“Clothes make the man.” Though it’s often attributed to Mark Twain (who did reportedly say it), this proverb has much deeper roots. In the early 1500s, Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, a Catholic priest and social critic (there used to be some of those), wrote “vestis virum facit” — clothes make the man. Even then it was probably not an original thought.

Superficially at least, clothing choices do seem to have an impact on day-to-day life. Before I became as well-heeled as I am today, I used to wear a suit and tie when I was flying somewhere. I found that I was treated better by TSA agents and airline staff. Maybe it had something to do with the misperceptions of youth though, or the distortions of the world caused by insecurity. Today I’m more apt to sport a tattered hoodie and a backpack for travel, and as long as I smile and crank up the charm, people seem just as nice as ever.

We are all learning to live with the new normal for dress in the wake of the pandemic. In the white-collar world, at least, we went from dress clothes, to pajamas at home, to jeans (or whatever) in a gradual return to the office. For the past two years, there has been an almost complete absence of sartorial peer pressure.

Now, in probably the highest stakes conflict thus far in the 21st century, we have an example of a world leader who so intensely, so obviously, values substance over appearance that he may put the final nail in the coffin of a world where the shallow exterior has primacy.

Volodymyr Zelensky is brave. He is steadfast. He is eloquent, and passionate. And most of the time, he is wearing either an olive drab or brown T-shirt.

Zelensky has been performing his official duties in a war zone. Such an environment calls for utilitarian attire. More than that though, Zelensky has tapped into something we are all desperately craving in our leaders in the 21st century: authenticity.

The Ukrainians on the front lines certainly aren’t wearing business suits. But neither are the majority of Americans who really make this country function and whose hard work gifts America with the wherewithal to support Ukraine in its fight against Russian tyranny. People don’t want to be lorded over, and that is what the business suit has come to represent. A finely tailored suit is something most Americans can’t afford, and wouldn’t be caught dead in if they could.

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In March, speaking to the U.S. Congress via video link, Zelensky wore his signature olive drab T-shirt. Chief economist at Euro Pacific Capital Peter Schiff complained to his 670,000 Twitter followers about the president of Ukraine failing to wear a suit. Schiff was quickly torched online.

Why are people like Schiff still doing this? Is it not what’s inside our skulls, and in certain generation-defining circumstances what’s inside our hearts, that makes us who we are? I posit that if fancy duds are even a minuscule part of what a CEO or a lawyer or a president has to offer his or her shareholders or clients or constituents, that’s an indication of that person being bad at his or her job.

A carefully crafted image — an impressive appearance — has long been the tool-of-choice of the huckster, the conman. A real leader doesn’t need it. A real leader doesn’t necessarily want it. Dressing for the job you want rather than the job you have might actually work. But perhaps the job you want is fighting for the country you love among your compatriots.

I hope that humanity has gotten to the point of at least learning something from our wars. There are a lot of lessons that the conflict in Ukraine has to offer, most of them probably more important than helping you pick something out of your closet. This particular lesson, though, could apply right now to your day-to-day life: judge other people by what they do rather than by what sort of fabric they drape over their bodies. If a suit makes you feel good, then wear it. If a T-shirt makes you feel good, then wear that. And don’t judge other people for doing the same.

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Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

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