The sartorial fresh air is often attributed to Mr. Kim, who isn’t much of a fashion plate himself but reportedly expanded the importing of luxury goods after coming to power in 2012, or at least he did before the United Nations tightened sanctions. His wife, Ri Sol-ju, who has a fondness for tailored form-fitting dresses, is seen as something of a style icon.

While a number of young women carried fashionable purses, we weren’t permitted to visit any department stores, so examining the provenance of items was impossible. Chinese counterfeits are reportedly plentiful. Most people wear clothes made of vynalon, a synthetic fiber produced in North Korea since the 1950s that is considered a symbol of the country’s ideology of self-reliance but has the disadvantage of being stiff and difficult to dye.

The senior Foreign Ministry officials who were our interlocutors — all men — would have easily blended into the crowd in New York. One wore a blue blazer and blue trousers with a white button-down shirt; another, a black and white checked jacket, black pants and a white shirt; the third, a black suit, white shirt and blue tie with white polka dots.

Despite such evidence of what, for a repressive country, constitutes fashion experimentation, uniforms were ubiquitous. And not just for those in the military, where hats with tops as big as small pizza pans and sharply pressed loosely fitted brown pants are worn by men and women officers.