Last Friday, Ambassadors and Senior Diplomats from over 180 countries gathered at the historic Hay-Adams House to attend Design by Diplomacy, a conversation and reception with leaders in the American and international fashion communities. The goal of the discussion? To examine how fashion — and the designers, media, and businesses that create, promote and sustain it — can convey powerful diplomatic messages around the world.

The event kicked off with a historical fun fact: Benjamin Franklin was America’s first fashion icon. Yes, it’s true, the former U.S. President was an envoy to France during the American Revolution. Upon his visit to the country, Franklin eschewed the formal wear of the worldly court of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, and instead donned a fur hat. French men came to associate this trend with Franklin and so copied his look that they ignited a fur hat craze across the country. The message was clear: Franklin’s hat contributed to the cultural and diplomatic bridge across the two countries. In a video message, Secretary of State John Kerry that “fashion helps to create a national identity and can provide a platform on which countries can relate to each other.”

The conversation that ensued covered a wide range of topics, from cultural diplomacy and promotion of trade to Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits and the Zuckerberg effect, as in the phenomenon of wearing a hoodie to address your shareholders. Moderated by ELLE Editor-in-Chief Robbie Myers, the panel featured CFDA President and CEO Steven Kolb, who was joined Robin Givhan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fashion Critic of the Washington Post and Chinese-American designer and CFDA Member Derek Lam. Givhan perhaps summed up the heart of the matter best when she stated her hope for the future administration’s attitude to fashion: that the next President can sit down and speak about fashion the same way President Barack Obama fills in his March Madness bracket every sprint;  to attend a fashion show the same way the President will throw out the first pitch, and to speak about what they are wearing the same way they proudly proclaim that their car is a Cadillac. In short, to not be ashamed to discuss about fashion as a vertical that can really impact not only the cultural but also the diplomatic horizon.