Diplomatic Spouses Style and Substance Youthful Optimism at Heart of Hungarian Wife by Gail Scott At home in Budapest, she has her own business as an image consultant. Here in Washington, she takes charge of her husband’s closet and loves clothes that bring out the fun in life — but Zsuzsa Szombati, wife of Hungarian Ambassador Béla Szombati, is no lightweight only interested in the superficial trappings. “I am interested in helping the whole person,” Zsuzsa told The Washington Diplomat. “Of course, what people wear is important because the first impression that most people have is what usually stays in their mind and that includes how you dress. But I like to dress people from the inside out, making sure that what they choose will give the correct impression and fully represent who they really are,” she explained. “When my husband was ambassador in Paris, we lived in a very fancy neighborhood full of nouveau riche — men dressed from head to toe in Versace or Armani with trophy women on their arms,” she recalled. “But I believe that you only need to wear one or two good things at a time or it spoils the look.” To that end, Zsuzsa loves to mix elements of sound fashion design — much like first lady Michelle Obama — whereby taste and style are paramount, as opposed to cost. Where did Zsuzsa’s own sense of style come from? Interestingly enough, it stemmed from the Soviet policies imposed on Hungary during her childhood. “If it hadn’t been for the political climate when I grew up in Hungary, I would have loved to have gone into sales and marketing, but they didn’t exist,” Zsuzsa said. “Everything was owned by the state. I will never forget a Soviet advertisement for shoes. It said, ‘When you need shoes, go to the shoe store.’ Can you imagine? We had three shoe stores in Budapest, but they were all exactly alike and carried all the same shoes because they were owned by the state.” So the university graduate instead specialized in history and French literature. “I didn’t find a place in the ‘commercial box’ like I would today. There weren’t the professions of sales and marketing or communication; they simply didn’t exist,” she said. “Under communist regimes, it’s only a one-way communication from the top.” Although she thinks life during Soviet times wasn’t as limited in Hungary as it was in some other Eastern European countries, Zsuzsa (pronounced su-za) said that living under communist rule did teach her valuable lessons that made her “better able to understand why and how we have problems in a world today with all the different cultures.” She singles out “the creative Hungarian spirit” in helping her country survive under so many different regimes during its long history. “Communism couldn’t break us,” she said. “You can change the political system but you just can’t change people’s minds … we still had the Hapsburg spirit.” Zsuzsa also credits her mother Ilona and her grandmother for teaching her to enjoy life, no matter what happens around you. “I had a very pretty mom and she loved to entertain and had an eye for fashion,” Zsuzsa recalled. “I’ll always remember the coat she had tailored for me for my 16th birthday. My grandmother was fun and smart too and a great cook. She was born in 1894 so she lived under the time of the monarchy and used to tell me about the Hungary she knew. I lived through her stories of what it was like during the Austrian-Hungarian empire, and I think that gave me a different outlook than many other Hungarians my age.” Today, as a diplomatic spouse who is constantly expected to entertain, Zsuzsa said she feels lucky to have had this family background and a happy childhood even during the communist regime that stretched over her formative years. “I’m doing now as an ambassador’s wife what my mother taught me to do,” she explained, with a twinkle in her eye. “I want to put more playfulness in life — the world is already too serious. “I am very realistic with, what you say, two feet, maybe even three feet on the ground,” she added, laughing. “But I believe in taking a lighter approach to life.” Zsuzsa’s lighthearted outlook (“I’m still a little girl inside,” she says) is a healthy antidote to the crushing demands placed on ambassadors like her husband, Béla Szombati. “My husband and I met in university. We were both in the same study group for history and French literature and saw each other on a daily basis for the five years of university. We met at the end of my first year and we were married at the end of my third year, when I was 23 and he was 24,” Zsuzsa said. “I saw that he was very smart and always a stand-out. His professors appreciated him — he was creative and was the first to ask ‘Why?’ And since his father had been a diplomat, he planned to become a diplomat.” He has since gone on to serve as head of the Strategic Planning and Information Management Department at the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2006-09) as well as Hungary’s ambassador to the United Kingdom (2002-06) and to France (1994-99). Next Page

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