Madiba shirt

Within the clothing industry, Mandela's willingness to wear the casual attire—he eventually owned dozens of the shirts—marked a new style of international business dress.

In a broader sense, the fashion choice can be read as a signal of "friendly" regime change away from strict formality and toward greater acceptance.

[1] It can also be argued that, throughout his life, Mandela's fashion was a significant part of his public image: in the 1950s, he dressed in sophisticated clothes; during the Rivonia Trial in 1963–64, he brought out Xhosa traditions with a leopard-skin kaross; and after his release from prison, he wore the colourful Madiba shirt often.

[7] In 2013, art historian Lize van Robbroeck wrote: Mandela's idiosyncratic shirts (now, of course, avidly marketed) signal his freedom to take or leave Western conventions of power: they are the sartorial embodiment of a vision of global citizenship.

This semiotics of emancipation is beautifully communicated in the comic book when a young girl points at Mandela and asks, "Excuse me, but why do you wear a shirt like that?"