In her book, My Life’s Journey, Janet Kataha Museveni, the First Lady says one of the things that struck her about her husband in their early dating days was his poor sense of fashion.
“He [Yoweri Museveni] dressed very badly, always wearing mismatched shirts, trousers and boots. He was prone to wear red undershirts and then cover them with another coloured short-sleeved shirt, khaki trousers and black boots with colourful socks. Even though his dress was horrendous, he was always very clean which he still is to this day,” Janet wrote.
That was in the early 1970s. Over the past 38 years, Museveni sense of fashion has evolved, changing with the times, his age and political moods of the season.
In his early days as president, Museveni favoured the Kaunda suit for formal functions like budget speeches and during occasional addresses to the National Resistance Council (NRC).
Yet he also often donned military fatigues especially when he travelled out of Kampala in rural areas where his image as a “strong military” leader was still ingrained in the psyche of the people.
Remember at that time the country had not held a general election so the concept of a civilian president had not sunk in.
In the 1990s as the country became stable and after the 1996 elections, Museveni started donning double breasted suits, which were the in-thing those days. A double-breasted suit comprised a coat with wide, overlapping front flaps with two symmetrical columns of buttons at the front.
Museveni always preferred his suits stripped but he also had a rich collection of solid colours (gray and black).
After the bruising 2001 elections he added the Stetson hat to the suit, complementing his look further. He was starting to age and wanted to adopt the look of a “wise elder”.
In the 2000s still, he took to wearing three button suits which were fashionable. He looked splendid in the grey three-button suit he donned in a meeting with former US President George Bush in Washington DC in 2003.
After the 2006 elections, Museveni started adopting a casual look but gradually. He would wear a khaki trouser and match it with a cotton long sleeved shirt. Those who have followed him closely would have noticed that Museveni crystallized the casual look during the Bonnabagaggawale country-wide tours in 2008 and 2009. Yet largely, he still donned suits for formal state functions.
After the 2011 elections, Museveni fully embraced the casual wear. He also added open leather sandals, doing away with formal shoes.
At this point, approaching his mid-70s, Museveni did not want to be shackled by the formalities of wearing suits. After 20 years of wearing suits and ties, he seemed to have grown tired of them.
It took long for some family members, especially his three daughters, to accept their father’s new look.
One morning in 2013, President Museveni dressed in a long-sleeved white cotton shirt and a pair of black trousers headed to Kiboga by helicopter.
Around 3PM on the same day, he was scheduled to fly to Arusha, Tanzania, to attend the EAC summit.
When he returned from Kiboga at about 2.00PM, he immediately signaled that he wanted to rush to the airport and board his jet to Arusha.
Some of his aides, however, thought that he was dressed inappropriately for such an important summit where he was set to meet his counterparts from East Africa.
Out of respect and fear, they could not tell him.
Then one of them contacted Natasha Karugire, then in-charge of State House household and told her to try to convince his father “to wear something formal like a suit” for the summit.
Natasha, who was within the environs of State House Entebbe immediately stepped in, approached her father and whispered something to his ears.
As he listened to his daughter, Museveni made faces and then smiled. But she won.
The convoy was put on standby as the president rushed to change into a formal suit.
Since then however, Museveni has not allowed anyone to determine what he should or should not wear.
