Madame President by Helene Cooper

Author:Helene Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Chapter 12

ALL PROTOCOLS OBSERVED

Monrovia, January 16, 2006

The hats. Years before the fascinators appeared at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the women of Liberia conducted a master class on the ancient art of millinery.

It was to be expected, really. How could the inauguration of the first woman ever elected president of an African country not be the kind of turbaned affair to rival the mad hatters of Ascot?

Liberian women live to dress up and believe strongly that they are not fully clothed if they haven’t put some kind of ornamentation atop their head. During the war, they still donned all of their finery on Sundays and trooped to church, to weddings, or to funerals in full regalia, including stockings in the ninety-degree, no-air-conditioning heat. There was no way they would not pull out all the stops for the inauguration of the first female president.

And Ellen set the pace. To take the oath of office on January 16, 2006, she wore an intricate lace and gold-lined long ivory sarong and tunic that perfectly matched her cream kitten-heeled slingback sandals. A single strand of pearls around her neck. Big gold earrings. Dramatic eyeliner and mascara. But what was on her body was completely dwarfed by what sat upon her head: an elaborate, intricate cream head-tie that added almost another foot to her height.

The officials who came from around the world to witness history made their own lower-wattage efforts at headgear. First Lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had received the memo that the American Embassy sent on what to wear, and both came helmeted and pristine. Despite the muggy ninety-two degrees, both women wore button-down suit jackets over their skirts: Bush in a light pastel green with taupe pumps and Rice in a rust jacket and taupe skirt. Perched precariously upon the head of the American secretary of state was a wide-brimmed sand straw hat, which she managed to pull off despite edging dangerously close to safari territory. The American first lady took it up a notch, matching her hat perfectly to her mint suit and adorning it with a perfectly dyed-to-match flower.

But neither of them could touch the Liberian women for sheer headpiece daring. The women of Liberia had fought, scratched, stolen, borrowed babies, cheated, and bled to get a woman up onto that podium on Inauguration Day; this was their day to drink in their victory, and they were determined to do it up right.

R.L., a businesswoman known by the initials of her nickname, Republic of Liberia, came to the inauguration decked out from head to toe in red, white, and blue, the colors of the flag of the Republic. Her shoes were red and white. Her dress was red and white striped, with a white star over a blue background over her right breast. She had on a blue necklace and a matching blue, wide-brimmed hat.

The Holy Ghost women were all in white, their heads wrapped up in complicated scarves.

One robust-looking woman wore a light-blue lace gown over a floor-length shift cut daringly around her bustline.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.