Diplomatic Ties part 390: Vanda Fine Clothing.
My great grandfather was a sailor and later in life managed to become the captain of his own ship. He travelled around the world and he was in New York in the early 50s, soon after the UN headquarters had been moved there. He bought these cufflinks with the caption “UN - We Believe”.
As a sailor he had experienced WWII first hand (even if Sweden was neutral the Swedish merchant navy was regularly the target of attacks, mainly from submarines. Some surely intentional, in other cases probably just because the ships were mistaken for other nations’ boats). I don’t think that my great grandfather was that interested in politics, but he was convinced that the UN was a good idea.
My great grandfather died before I was born but I got these cufflinks from my great grandmother when I was a teenager. At that time I had no ambitions to become a diplomat, let alone did I know that I would actually be working with UN related issues. The cufflinks are not very valuable. It’s not real gold and I think they made a lot of them. But they certainly have a special meaning for me.
The suit is from Isaia, the shirt is Marchesan MTM, a wonderful and very unusual wool/silk grenadine tie from Vanda, Battisti ps and shoes from Edward Green.
Also check out our revamped website: Diplomatic Ties.
And if you are interested in music, check out: All Kinds of (Good) Music as well.
