In the book published in conjunction with the exhibition "Read My Pins" (that took place in 2009) at the Museum of Arts and Design, in New York, Madeleine Albright, who died of cancer yesterday at 84, mentioned the brooches she chose to wear when she visited Moscow.
Meeting Russian President Putin, Albright decided to wear three "Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, See No Evil" monkeys carved out of tagua nuts and sitting on glass cabochons. Albright had asked in that occasion for international monitors to be allowed into Chechnya, where brutal fighting was taking place, to protect civilians, but Putin blocked the request as he denied any human rights violations were taking place, hence the "no evil" pins.
Another pin incident with Moscow occurred when Albright donned a stylised arrow-like pin by Lisa Vershbow during discussions with the Kremlin about nuclear weapons. The United States wanted to make changes in the antiballistic missile treaty, but Russia didn't. The Russian foreign minister looked at the pin and enquired if that was an interceptor missile. Albright stated it was, adding "As you can see, we can make them very small. So, you'd better be ready to negotiate."
According to the records, Putin actually told President Clinton that he usually paid attention to Albright's pins and tried to decipher their meanings (Albright, the first senior US figure to meet the Russian leader in Moscow in 2000, wrote more about Putin in her 2018 book "Fascism: A Warning", in the latter she described him as "small and pale, so cold as to be almost reptilian. He was in East Germany when the Berlin Wall fell and says he understands why it had to happen – a position built on walls and dividers couldn't last; but he expected something to rise in its place, and nothing was proposed. Putin is embarrassed by what happened to his country and determined to restore its greatness.").
Born Marie Jana Korbelová in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1937, she was known as Madeleine since infancy. During the Second World War, Albright fled with her family for London in 1939 after the Nazis took Czechoslovakia, and then moved in 1948 to the United States. Raised Catholic, only decades later she discovered that her parents were Jewish and that several family members were murdered in the Holocaust.
In 1957 she went to Wellesley College, near Boston, and met while working at the Denver Post, Joseph Albright, who came from one of the most powerful American newspaper dynasties of the time. They married two years later and Madeleine Albright pursued a master's degree, a doctorate in international relations at Columbia University, New York, and started teaching at Georgetown University in the '80s, while working at the election campaign staffs of Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic candidate for vice-president in 1984, and of Michael Dukakis, the presidential candidate in 1988.
The first pins that entered her collections were presents from her husband and his family, among the others there was a fish pin with an emerald eye and ruby scales.
After her divorce in 1983 she started experimenting more with jewelry and using it as a way to highlight her identity and pride. Pins also became more fashionable in the '80s as they were natural accompaniment to power jackets and pantsuits.
Albright also found a favourite shop in Washington's busiest commercial district, the Tiny Jewel Box, that sold treasures from all over the world and that became her main spot for pins.
In 1992 President Clinton asked her to serve as America's ambassador to the United Nations and, being the only woman on the council, she started paying attention to her look and tried to make it more interesting adding brooches that she also bought from antique shows.
Her choice at the time mainly fell on red, white and blue brooches that seemed suitable for America's UN ambassador and she acquired quite a few pieces from the '40s by American brand Trifari such as an eagle brooch and an Uncle Sam's hat.
A large American flag pin became her favourite for Fourth of July celebrations, while for funerals she opted for a tricolor memorial bow.
Albright started using pins as communicative tools in the 1994 when she worked as American ambassador to the United Nations.
In the aftermath of the first Persian Gulf War, Iraq was required to accept UN inspections and provide full disclosure about its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons program, but it refused to do so. Albright criticised Iraq and the Iraqi press answered with a poem in which she was called "unparalleled serpent". Shortly afterwards, to go to a meeting with Iraqi officials, she decided to wear a serpent pin she had bought a few years earlier. A journalist noted the brooch and, from then on, Albright decided to wear pins at her meetings to express her moods, worries and hopes.
When President Clinton nominated her America's sixty-four secretary of state in 1996, Albright became the highest-ranking woman in the history of US government. At her sworn in ceremony on January 23, 1997, she had a pin accident: the antique eagle pin she had acquired had a bit of a complicated clasp and, during the formal ceremony, the eagle barely hung on.
Maybe that moment may have been considered as a symbol of the pitfalls Albright encountered on her path. In May 1996, journalist Lesley Stahl asked then-ambassador Albright about the alleged death of half a million children as a result of sanctions imposed on Iraq, "Is the price worth it?" the journalist asked. Defending UN sanctions, Albright replied, "We think the price is worth it." She later regretted her comments and apologized for her remarks in a 2020 interview with The New York Times.
As the years passed, Albright expanded her collection of pins that kept on including patriotic designs, but also started featuring a wider variety of pieces, from animals and insects to sea creatures and musical instruments, or more arty and flamboyant pieces.
The diplomatic community became aware of her passion for pins and often gave her brooches as presents – Leah Rabin, widow of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, gave her a pin of a dove symbolising the hope of peace in the Holy Land.
Albright's passion for brooches gave a much needed boost to the American costume jewelry industry, but, more importantly, they aroused public interest.
People started checking out what she had pinned on her jacket and what she could mean through it: slow diplomatic negotiations that displeased her were symbolised by turtles; talks that made her feel aggravated by a crab; a ladybug meant she felt happy, hot-air balloons that she held high hopes; a tranquil swan or wise owl were ways to conjure up the quality needed to make negotiations succeed; while the will to deliver a sharp message was symbolised by a bee.
There were symbols, metaphors, messages and irony in her brooches: in 1999 she had to meet Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Sergeyevich Ivanov after a diplomat (and spy), Stanislav Borisovich Gusev, was arrested while trying to harvest data from a listening device located in a conference room nearby Albright's office. Albright greeted the Foreign Minister on friendly terms, but she also chose for the meeting a pin shaped like an enormous bug.
Albright didn't usually buy expensive pieces and favoured affordable costume jewelry in the most disparate materials, often made by anonymous designers. She was also given pins by friends and family members and, for the 1997 "Brooching It Diplomatically" exhibition in Philadelphia, the organiser of the event Helen W. Drutt English invited international designers to create new pieces for her that could send messages.
Dutch Gijs Bakker created a strikingly clever piece, a Lady Libery brooch with tiny clocks in her eyes arranged so that the wearer looking down and a visitor looking across would have been able to tell when the time of the meeting was up.
After Albright there hasn't been a politician nor diplomat using accessories or jewels like she did.
"Read My Pins" remains on loan to the National Museum of American Diplomacy, but you can enjoy a digital version of the exhibition and read the stories behind the pins at this link. The exhibition will be donated to the Museum upon the completion of the gallery space (the museum is scheduled to open in 2024).
It seems only natural for Albright's pins to be in a museum: they weren't indeed just a diplomatic tool or an icebreaker, but symbols of a growing confidence and independence and of another glass ceiling that was shattered for women. One of her pins - Vivian Shimoyama's "Breaking the Glass Ceiling", made with fused glass and a gold trim and part of the collection - perfectly represents this concept.
