An alternative to suits and ties.

Looking at photos of international political meetings nowadays can be pretty boring. Everyone, be they African, North-American, Asian, Latin-American or European wears the same standardized black(or, if they're feeling creative, blue) suit, with a matching tie. The only oddballs are Arab sheiks, communist dictators with their proletarian-military greens, and the occasional African leader wearing bright colours.
With a POD no earlier than 1900, try to make the G-8 or G-20 meetings more... colorful. Maybe more varied, with each country/region adopting a dressing style from its own culturer.
 
Maybe a very weird form of ultranationalism in which everything even remotely foreign is rejected in favor of local customs. So they not only start persecuting foreigners, but everything about foreigners, including their style of dress. Suits are too British. The various nations go back to their nations' traditional dress. So we have Germans in lederhosen, Frenchmen in giant whigs, and Italians and Greeks in togas. Not sure how we'd go about doing this though . . .
 
What if China kept the Mao suit? IIRC the Mao suit (or Zhongshan suit) was based on the uniform worn by Japanese students, which in turn was based on a Prussian design.
 
Well that's colorful. A Saudi Prince visits the embassy of Bhutan.

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A lot of older Chinese men still wear the Zhongshan suit. The leaders generally don't, and haven't since the early 90s. I think Deng was the last one to wear it for state events. Maybe you could find a way to get it more deeply ingrained into Chinese identity.
 
Well, looking at pre-1900, didn't events during the French Revolution cause many of the colorful/fancy clothing of the aristocracy to go out of vogue?
 
Maybe you could have one or some of the empires being more centralised and forceful in trying to assimilate their colonies.

Then, in the 40s-60s, you get a an even stronger decolonisation process, leading to a backlash against "imperialist" dress and so a reintroduction or national dress or probably in many cases, an idealised version of it.
 
Well, looking at pre-1900, didn't events during the French Revolution cause many of the colorful/fancy clothing of the aristocracy to go out of vogue?

I think the Revolution certainly lent to the change in fashion that was already happening anyway. But the trend toward more informal style started well before then.
 
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