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Madeleine Albright makes fashion debut

She's sat in on a lot of important events but Tuesday, Madeleine Albright's front-row seat was at the Vera Wang fashion show in New York.
/ Source: TODAY.com

She's sat in on a lot of important events but Tuesday, Madeleine Albright's front-row seat was at the Vera Wang fashion show in New York.

Was she there to shop for a spring wardrobe? Maybe add to her collection of signature brooches? Had she made plans to join Beyoncé and Kim Kardashian by the catwalk?

Celebs at the tents

Slideshow  74 photos

Celebs at the tents

Check out all the stylish stars getting a front-row look at the biggest designer shows.

Nope. The former Secretary of State was there with a real VIP — her 9-year-old granddaughter. The girl, she told Women's Wear Daily, had won tickets in a San Francisco auction. So Albright joined her, even taking photos with Wang, WWD reported, before the show. "Vera is a real example of a woman who has achieved in this country," she told the publication.

Albright, the first woman to take the Secretary of State post, has famously used fashion as a tool for communication. Her memoir, "Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat's Jewel Box," chronicles the events of her childhood in Czechoslovakia and details how she artfully employed her collection of jeweled brooches to emphasize her sparkling talking points.

Models prepare backstage at Fashion Week

On days she wanted to sting? She wore a bee. When discussing the bugging of the State Department by Russians in 1999, a giant beetle. She pinned on a snake to meet with Iraqi officials after one of Saddam Hussein's men called her a "serpent."

But among the often-hissing fashion crowd, Albright held her own Tuesday. Wearing a black leather skirt and chunky gold jewelry, though no brooches, she told E! News that she "just tried to not look dowdy today."

She fit in so well among the style crowd that E! overheard Harper's Bazaar magazine editor Glenda Bailey praising her accessories — and telling the former presidential cabinet member she's a "trendsetter."

See? No pins required.