If you ever walked through the halls of the UN Headquarters with a tour guide leading the way, you would know it’s never just a tour. It’s a story in motion; it’s history, diplomacy, and sometimes, a touch of fashion.
Since November 1952, the United Nations tour guides have welcomed more than 42 million visitors, offering what for many is their very first, and sometimes, only direct encounter with the UN. Guests step inside the General Assembly Hall and the Security Council Chamber, pause by gifts from Member States, and even stand in front of disarmament exhibits that include landmines and fragments from Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
But what lingers most often in memory is the guides themselves.
Here’s the thing: a guide’s presence is more than voice and knowledge. It’s also an attire. Over the decades, UN tour guides have put on outfits that carry symbolic weight. Some guides choose to wear their own national dress, proudly displaying cultural heritage on each step.
Others put on the official UN uniform, an outfit that has quietly evolved across generations, designed by fashion houses like Christian Dior, Benetton, and today, the Swedish School of Textiles in Borås, Sweden.
It might seem like a small detail, fabric, cut, and colour, but for a child seeing the UN for the first time, or a visitor from far away, that first impression lasts. The guides aren’t just narrating global milestones; they embody the very diversity they represent.
So next time you pass a tour group in the General Assembly Lobby, take a second look. Behind every scarf, jacket, or dress is not just a guide, but a living tradition, one that’s been greeting the world for more than seventy years, and will keep doing so for many more.
