UNITED NATIONS — Some call it a useless bureaucracy. Others praise it as a key tool of humanitarian aid, peacemaking and global diplomacy.

Whatever their core beliefs, nearly every national leader agrees the United Nations is a valuable stage to make their case before the world. And it's a stage no one enters in anything but their finest clothes, a fact on vivid display at the U.N. General Assembly in New York this week.

For many diplomats and national officials, the General Assembly to provided an opportunity to show off clothing with not just elegant cuts and fabrics, but a symbolic message.

Sofonea Shale, the chief of staff for Sam Matekane, prime minister of the Kingdom of Lesotho — a mountainous kingdom locked inside South Africa — wore a mokorotlo, a colorful, intricate straw hat

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