By Eliot Wilson
Clothes are indicators of who we are and how we want to be perceived. This is especially true of politicians, for even the most straightforward of whom everything is, in some way, a signal. Think of Donald Trump’s uniform of the boxy navy suit and over-long red tie; Rishi Sunak’s hyper-slim Henry Herbert silhouette; Margaret Thatcher’s armour-like tailored skirt suits; even Jeremy Corbyn’s dogged geography-supply-teacher aesthetic of mud-coloured jacket and indeterminate trousers. It is always calculated for impact.
Yet politicians are reluctant to admit what we all know. When Sir Keir Starmer held an event in Essex last month to launch the “first steps” he would take if he became prime minister, he rejected the conventional suit and appeared in a white shirt and dark trousers, the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms. Some saw echoes of Sir Tony Blair’s carefully studied informality, but it was the BBC’s Chris Mason who articulated what everyone was thinking.
“His jacket and tie were nowhere to be seen nor were the buttons on his cuff, his sleeves rolled up to just below his elbow. This might sound superficial, even trivial, but this sort of stuff doesn’t happen by accident. They don’t regard it as superficial or trivial, or they wouldn’t do it. So neither should we. Sir Keir did not leave half his clothes on the train by mistake.”
Even the most junior scribe watching the Labour leader’s performance will, on some level, have noted and absorbed Starmer’s clothing. It was not difficult to decode: appearing in shirt sleeves is seen as unstuffy, earnest, ready to work. Its lack of display is a display in itself. By rejecting a jacket and tie, Starmer was indicating that he was serious about the task at hand.
When Mason raised it directly, though, Starmer flailed. Clothing is something we all observe but tend not to talk about, and certainly we never address the impression someone is trying to give. The BBC man asked directly: “What’s this all about?”
“It’s about doing politics in a different way,” Starmer ventured defensively. Then, sounding for all the world like a man who knows he must keep talking but has no idea what to say, he went on: “it’s about trying to get across the sort of leader I am and my mind set and who I’ve got in my mind’s eye when I make decisions”.
Donald Trump’s uniform of the boxy navy suit and over-long red tie; Rishi Sunak’s hyper-slim Henry Herbert silhouette; Keir Starmer’s rolled up sleeves – it is all calculated for impact.
Sir Keir has a special “decision-making” outfit, then? That is certainly one approach. He was, of course, bluffing, and quite badly, because, for reasons we would all understand but struggle to set out, it would be monstrously superficial and manipulative to tell the truth. Imagine the leader of the opposition saying “I wanted people to think that I’m determined and efficient and competent, focused on getting things done, so I decided not to wear a jacket and tie.” It sounds childish.
Why are we so reluctant to vocalise what we all accept as straightforward? Partly, I think, like any measure of political manipulation, it sounds insulting to the subject of the manipulation: it says that the observer is so easily influenced, so suggestible, that he or she will draw a long chain of inferences from something as simple as a man appearing in shirt sleeves.
It is more than that, though. In this country, at least, there is a lingering sense that deliberately “dressing to impress” — whatever the intended impression might be — is somehow vulgar, vain and almost pitiful. How often are we complimented on what we are wearing and respond with a self-deprecatory remark about “throwing something on” or “this old thing”? Men have a partial get-out clause in that there is still a faint framework of uniformity about formal wear, from a lounge suit through to white tie, so you are following convention rather than making conscious and deliberate choices. For women it is much harder.
Perhaps this should not surprise us. Politics is an arena in which the performative and the real are often clearly distinct. Think about it: if you ask a politician about his party’s electoral chances, he or she will be upbeat and optimistic. You know it is not a genuine opinion, the politician knows you know that. Yet to do anything else is unthinkable.
That is how we should think about the way politicians dress. Senior figures in any party will have given consideration to what they are wearing, its symbolism, its connotations. There’s nothing wrong with that, any more than it is discreditable to dress up for a date. We all recognise it, and are able to analyse it with a significant degree of sophistication. What we cannot, must not do, what is utterly outwith convention and acceptability, is to talk about it. Because that would be weird.
•Eliot Wilson is co-founder of Pivot Point Group
