That tenth picture is a surprising look for him.
Can you link to it directly? I think I’m getting different results to you: I have him looking relatively normal, in a white suit (unless that’s what you mean…).
Which did lead to some regretable attempts to overcompensate.
This is the tenth picture I see in the link.
You know, I always thought Augusto Pinochet was head and shoulders above other contemporary dictator fashion. I mean, it’s certainly still in the military persuasion, but he makes strong use of blues and reds that contrast nicely.
The Jonger is looking reasonably GQ in this picture. I saw it last week and did a double-take.
That looks like it started as a painting of his dad, and got Jong’s head put on it. But he should try that look himself. The “plain revolutionary” look is hopelessly dated, because the age that produced that style is now so far in the past. Not even the Chinese or Vietnamese communists dress like that any more.
Pinochet benefitted from the fact that the Chilean Army had not gotten around to modernizing the dated but stylish dress uniforms they had adopted some time around WW1. One of the problems Stalin had with some of his outfits was precisely that he would seek something that looked military but was not exactly the regulation uniform.
Gaddafi, you have to grant it, at least experiments – reg uniform some days, creative interpretation thereof other times, other days traditional tribal, sometimes “modern” tribal, etc. ; Saturday Night Live even did a parody ad for “the Gaddafi look” (using the tune from the Jordache ads: “He’s got the look, the Third World’s after…”). Saddam Hussein tried to imitate the style but it really never worked for him (an interesting note – Sadat and Mubarak of Egypt and Hafez Assad of Syria, were real military officers before going into the strongman business, yet they did not much affect the uniformed look).
Fidel gets “grandfathered” as to his look – the beard is a trademark, besides, it helps his profile, he does not have a very strong jawline. In the latter part of his rule he had taken to dressing spiffier for multinational meetings and the like, though, often wearing suits or guayaberas and ocassionally a dress uniform, so it’s not like he didn’t notice. Daniel Ortega of the Sandinistas tried to copy the guerrilla-chic look in the 80s but could not pull it succesfully since he emanated petit bourgeoisie up to his designer eyeglass frames.
OTOH, Rafael “The Goat” Trujillo was just a ridiculous study in bad taste and overcompensation.
Same with Mao and Lenin—and after they died? Boom, Mummy city.
Looks like the most surefire way to get a simple burial is to plan some big, grandiose tomb. Then you’ll end up in a ditch.
Nicolae Ceauşescu, though, if you’d seen him on the street you’d’ve been moved to give him a couple of coins. I remember after he and his equally dressed-down wife were executed, their living quarters were shown in the news - very spartan and plain it all was, too.
Nobody is ever going to beat the Nazis in terms of uniforms. Evil as they were, the German uniforms of World War II (and after, since they kept a lot of the basic styles) will never be beat. All of their military uniforms look amazing, especially the SS officers’ dress uniforms. And Hitler himself always wore great outfits. My favorite part of any World War II movie is always the German uniforms.
These other regimes just don’t get it.