"And the mats can get very slippery, so I stick to a more traditional flow".
"Thank you, my young friends, for your interest in Vietnam," Madame Binh says, straightening her grey silk ao dai, a traditional flowing trouser suit.
Except that the book is published by AuthorHouse, a company in which the traditional flow of money for publication, from publisher to author, is reversed.
"You're the Pavarotti of Nigerian opera!" exclaimed one happy viewer post-show last week, rushing over to shake hands with Baba Epega, a classically-trained musician who had appeared on stage dressed in traditional flowing agbada robes.
(In a chapter of "Safe Area Gorazde" describing a character's arduous trek through a forest, he deliberately draws the figure walking left -- against the traditional flow of a comics page -- to create a sense of slowness and difficulty).
But soon after, the same papers "unmasked" Ms. Rodríguez by revealing that she never wore her pollera (pronounced pol-YEH-rah), the traditional flowing skirt worn by indigenous women, in her university classes.
To younger, rock-savvy Britons, Gainsbourg is the French singer and songwriter who managed to reverse, long after his death, the traditional flow of musical influence across the Channel or across the Atlantic.
Dressed in the traditional flowing white gown and white cap, he oversees a fleet of 10 trucks that shuttle his goats from the dusty port to Ras Al Khaimah, the northernmost city in the United Arab Emirates, and then returns with goods destined for Iran.
In West Africa, where most of the countries are former French colonies, Mr. Ouedraogo noted that the two most famous nonwearers of suits are presidents of two English-speaking nations: Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, who wears agbadas, traditional flowing gowns, and Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, who is usually seen with his country's famous kente cloth.
