Don’t let the side down, be an ambassador for yourself by dressing the part
I don’t want to embarrass the gentlemen, so will obfuscate on the exact location of our rendezvous. The person in question is a senior diplomat, a British one, in a part of the world that invests heavily in all manner of things, including design and architecture. In short, it’s a place that believes that, sorry, appearances do matter.
Our diplomat is no doubt a very clever man but, well, he looks like he shares a wardrobe with Boris Johnson. On the day I visited him, his pointy shoes needed a polish. He had also clearly been forced to partake in too many banquets of late. His suit jacket looked rather taut and the bottoms of his trousers had kissed goodbye to his ankles (and not in a hipster way). I know, that’s not very kind of me but he is out in the world selling an image of our nation and supposedly doing his best to boost British trade.
As I listened to him talk, I wondered what packing instructions the Foreign Office gives to the men and women heading off to represent the UK. You would hope that they suggest purchasing some smart, made-in-Britain shoes from, say Crockett & Jones, and a suit that looks the part. If they can’t stretch to Jermyn Street, at least something new from Marks & Spencer.
I have always been wary of people who say things such as “I’m not interested in fashion,” or “I don’t care what it looks like, as long as it works.” These same people tend to be dismissive of art and architecture, indeed any touchpoint where the mundane can be elevated, where small moments of considered beauty can transform a person’s day, even impact health and educational outcomes. And the trouble is, perhaps like our diplomat, they miss the bigger picture. Something that functions well and looks the part is often good for commerce too – and certainly good for a nation promoting its soft-power assets.
On Wednesday, Monocle co-hosted an event at the Hungarian embassy in London. It was to mark the publication of Hungary Today, a book that Monocle has produced in partnership with Visit Hungary to promote tourism in the country. It’s a thing of beauty. Shot by a single photographer, Julia Sellmann (she also shot our Expo on the Castellers – the Catalans who build human towers – in issue 179), it has a consistency of tone and colour that is very pleasing. There’s also a unique binding process at play. The design by our art director, Sam Brogan, is flawless. It was edited by Steve Pill, who guides many of these partnership programmes. But what’s also special is that we found a tourism organisation with ambition, one that wanted to make something that told their country’s story afresh.
The evening’s main host was the Hungarian ambassador to the UK, Ferenc Kumin. He has a nice suit, he’s charming and knows how to promote his nation. We did a fun interview midway through the evening, where he explained the wines that were being served, told people where he likes to spend his Hungarian summers (he’s a north Lake Balaton kind of guy), and unpacked the musical and engineering educations that have helped his country excel in both fields.
And the embassy is good too. More than a century ago the building was an outpost for the Austro-Hungarian Empire but after they parted ways the Austrians moved around the corner and the Hungarians kept this property on Eaton Place. It remained the embassy during the communist era and today, in a rather pristine state, continues its work of keeping Hungary on the diplomatic map and looking tight.
For the April issue of Monocle, our foreign editor, Alexis Self, who came to the bash too, has been working on a special feature about the modern embassy. So you can expect to read much more on this topic soon. We have even persuaded the British ambassador to Somalia to pen a piece. Well, he is married to Konfekt’s editor, Sophie Grove, so we had an in.
But in the meantime perhaps we all need to channel our inner ambassador of a morning, think about how we are going to tell our stories – and our company’s as well – as we step out of our front door. Appearances matter. Shoes too.
To read more columns by Andrew Tuck, click here.
