Dress code
Editorial
Stabroek News
December 21, 2006
The front-page photograph in the state-owned newspaper of President Bharrat Jagdeo's arrival at Cochabamba, Bolivia, to attend the 5th Summit of South American Presidents earlier this month was striking. The spectacular scarlet and white traditional ceremonial outfits of the Bolivian Army's guard-of-honour contrasted sharply with Mr Jagdeo's casual, open-necked blue shirt!
A few days before, the President had appeared in an open-necked shirt at the University of Guyana's ceremonial convocation, amidst the academics' caps, capes, and ornate gowns, to present the President's Medal to the enrobed best graduating student. But, only last Saturday at the IDB forum at the national convention centre at Liliendaal, he was all but alone in suit and tie while nearly everyone else showed up in decidedly 'casual' dress.
In his brief tenure as president in 1997, also, Mr Samuel Hinds was photographed in an open-necked tunic next to the well-attired US President Bill Clinton and other Caricom Heads of Government at the USA-Caricom summit meeting in Barbados.
Were these isolated presidential sartorial solecisms or were they parts of a trend towards a renewed laissez-faire approach to official dress?
Up to the time of Independence, official dress conformed to contemporary colonial conventions. Almost all officials - from attorneys-at-law, clerks, civil servants, doctors and managers to newspaper reporters and schoolteachers - dressed in a standard manner: suits and ties for men and, on certain occasions such as events attended by visiting royalty, this could include hats, handbags and gloves for women.
The drastic relaxing of formal standards of dress since Guyana became a Republic in 1970, however, led to a collapse of the colonial code of dress; unintended confusion about protocol and propriety followed and society seems not to have recovered. Then, the president, cabinet ministers, high commissioners and other state officials adopted the new form of dress; in the National Assembly, the shirt-jac or Guyabera was elevated to the height of formality; but, at the junior levels of the public and teaching services and in society at large, people wore pretty much what they wanted.
The primary objective of an official dress code should be to convey a correct image in the conduct of state business. Whether it is intended or not, the way the President chooses to dress will indicate not only his administration's attitude to the business at hand but will also define appropriate wear for visitors and government officers who will try not to out-dress the chief executive. Foreign diplomats, except for many African, Arab or Asian countries who wear traditional dress, usually try to adjust to the host country's expectations, within certain limits.
Despite occasional variations, four forms of official dress - formal; semi-formal; informal; and casual - which conform broadly to common standards in the Western Hemisphere seem to have become current in Guyana.
Formal dress, usually of black or a dark colour, is expected for formal state occasions such as state banquets, Independence and Remembrance Day observances, ceremonial military parades, and the like; semi-formal dress, comprising suits or blazers and ties is worn as everyday business attire and in the law courts; open-necked Guyabera or shirt-jacs, de rigueur in the 1970s and 1980s, have been relegated to retainers and bodyguards; and plaid shirts and colourful party wear are casual dress. Women, whose dress standards are less rigidly defined, usually adjust nicely to the standard set by men.
Regardless of the occasion, public officers are expected to dress as the events warrant and eschew garish garments and inappropriate attire. In so doing, international faux pas can be avoided in future and standards can be set for society to emulate.