TIME Magazine's Top Ten Worst-Dressed Leaders

TIME Magazine has posted a top ten worst-dressed leaders' list and lord knows I read a lot of funny things on-line but this tops anything I have seen lately. Fittingly I have discovered it while struggling to find words to describe schandisimo portraits of bloody dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco (oddly not featured in the list).

I just wish I knew who the master of sartorial and political analysis was that wrote this, so that I could ask her/him to write as a guest in my blog! I was in tears from laughter by the time I got to number 2 and never stopped laughing. Frankly, laughing during the day when writing about an evil regime's hateful propaganda is a rare treat indeed.

Here are just two entries from the list to tempt you to go to read the entire article, which you can access here http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1915593_1915596,00.html

Safari Wear in the Hermit Kingdom

For a man who enjoys the finer things — he reportedly takes pleasure in Hollywood DVDs and expensive liquor, even as millions of North Koreans suffer in extreme hardship — you'd think Kim Jong Il would be a snappier dresser. Kim can mostly be found wearing unflattering khaki safari suits and Kanye West–sized sunglasses, accessorized with five-inch platform shoes to boost the diminutive Dear Leader's height and a high-and-tight pompadour that apparently serves the same purpose. Whereas his ill-fitting suits once did little to conceal Kim's paunch, in recent photographs he has seen wearing clothing several sizes smaller than usual — a result, analysts say, of his recent illness.

Iran's Members Only President

Given Iran's strict religious culture and the series of grim-faced, dourly dressed clerics that have been the face of the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution, one might expect more of the same from newly re-elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But Ahmadinejad's relaxed, man-of-the-people approach to fashion has garnered almost as much attention as his hard-line politics.

Like most Iranians, the President does not wear a necktie — a rule that was set in place by Ayatullah Khomeini, who banned them for being decadent and un-Islamic and for contributing to the spread of Western culture. Instead, he opts for simple cotton shirts topped with his trademark, a $30 Chinese-made khaki windbreaker purchased from a Tehran bazaar. The windbreaker, commonly dubbed the Ahmadinejacket, is widely derided for its similarity to the Members Only jackets that were briefly popular in the West in the 1980s; still, it has become popular among supporters hoping to emulate the President's look.