The Ambassador's Jewels

As ambassador to the United Nations, and then as secretary of state during the Clinton administration, Madeleine Albright sent subtle messages with the pins she wore. "Read my pins," she would tell reporters who pressed her for information. As the first woman to become America's top diplomat, Albright used her gender to advantage by incorporating jewelry into her toolbox. Her pins became her signature, and now they will be on display at the New York Museum of Arts and Design in an exhibition that follows the publication of her book, Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box. Albright sat down with NEWSWEEK's Eleanor Clift to talk about the inspiration for the book and the power of symbols. She begins by describing the pin she is wearing.

ALBRIGHT: Today I have on an elephant, not because I'm switching parties but because I was teaching today (at Georgetown University) about bilateral diplomacy, and it was the U.S.-India relationship, so it fit. Jewelry and pins have been worn throughout history as symbols of power, sending messages. Interestingly enough, it was mostly men who wore the jewelry in various times, and obviously crowns were part of signals that were being sent throughout history by people of rank. This all began when I was ambassador to the United Nations, and I clearly like jewelry, but what happened was Saddam Hussein called me a serpent. And I thought—well, that wasn't very nice—but I had a snake pin, so when we were dealing with Iraq I wore a snake pin. And when you come out of the Security Council there's always a gaggle of journalists there, so somebody asked me, 'Why are you wearing a snake pin?' And I said, 'Because Saddam Hussein called me a serpent.' And so then I thought, well, this is fun, so I went and I bought a lot of costume jewelry to kind of fit whatever the issue was we were going to be working on. When people would say, 'What are we going to do today?' or 'How do you feel?,' I said, 'Read my pins.' This was after George [H.W.] Bush had said, 'Read my lips.' I love being a woman and I was not one of these women who rose through professional life by wearing men's clothes or looking masculine. I loved wearing bright colors and being who I am. So the pins kind of evolved, and then they became signals to other foreign ministers. It was kind of fun because they actually noticed what I was wearing.

In your book you say President Putin told President Clinton he would look at your pins to try to figure out how you were feeling or what you were trying to say.
I was very concerned about what the Russians had been doing in Chechnya and denying everything, so I wore the three monkeys, the "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" monkeys, because they were denying what was going on. I'm not really sure he got the message.

On Russia, there is the story of the missile.
We were negotiating the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, and I had this pin that actually is more of an arrow, but all of a sudden the Russian foreign minister looked at me and said, 'Is that one of your interceptors?' and I said, 'Yes, we make them very small.' And then there was a period when we discovered that the Russians had bugged the State Department. We found something in one of the conference rooms, and the next time I met one of the Russians I wore this huge bug, and they definitely got that one.

You got some advice from Jeane Kirkpatrick, who preceded you at the U.N., and, like you, had come from academia.
She had some really practical advice. She said, "before you go to New York, get rid of your professor clothes. You have to buy professional-looking clothes," which was a great invitation to go out and spend a lot of money. She was great, and she wore a lot of pins. I don't think that she took it to the level I did, but she really understood what it was like to be a woman in that particular setting. The difference between humans and other mammals is that we know how to accessorize. It's a real icebreaker. People come up to me and say, "Why are you wearing that pin?" or I might be exercising or something, and people will say, "Why aren't you wearing a pin?"

You write at some length about the location of the pins.
There are some people who wear them on the right side, some on the left side. Some wear them on their lapels. I keep wearing my pins higher and higher. It just goes to show what happens in diplomacy. I was visiting South Korea. There were always good relations and nice dialogue. But there was a Korean foreign minister who thought he was not on the record and was having some fun, and said that he loves it when Secretary Albright would come to Seoul because we had a nice relationship and we were about the same age, but he was like an old man and I was so vigorous and besides when he gave me a hug I had very firm breasts. All of a sudden there was this outcry over this and there were questions about whether would he have to resign for saying that. So they asked me what I thought, and I said, "Well, I've got to have somewhere to put those pins." So that helped, but the next time we saw each other, we shook hands at a very respectful distance, no more hugging.