OK, I really don’t approve of criticizing ANY politician on their fashion sense, but it is refreshing to see a MALE politician criticized for their lack of fashion sense, specifically the charmingly unfashionable Jeremy Corbyn, in a sort of, “Turnabout is fair play,” kind of way.
FWIW, any reporter who writes this sort of bullshit beat sweetener should be banished from political reporting and sentenced to write for Vogue magazine, but since Ellie Pithers is actually writing this for Vogue magazine, I’ll give her a bit of a pass on this article:
WHO is Jeremy Corbyn’s stylist? He must have someone advising him on his wardrobe. For while the shifty suits remain at least one inch too large for his wiry frame, Corbyn’s certainly turned a corner in the long old road to chic. As one Twitter user commented after his confident performance on BBC1’s Question Time on Friday evening, it is a very skilled individual who has “turned the Corbyn look from a freight train-jumping hobo into a vaguely credible-looking adult”.
The employment of a stylist is not something Corbyn is likely to admit to, of course. “[Politics] is not a fashion parade, it's not a gentleman's club, it's not a banker's institute, it's a place where the people are represented,” he said crossly during an interview with Newsnight in 1984, given after he was criticised by a Tory MP for being “Labour scruff”. In said interview he is wearing a jumper knitted by his mum, and possibly one of his trademark £1.50 vests underneath, purchased from B & H Quality Underwear & Socks in Nag’s Head Market, north London. Savile Row suiting – or Amanda Wakeley leather trousers – this is not.
I think that criticizing politicians on their appearance to be stupid, I find the disparity of this analysis between male and female politicians to be deeply wrong and objectively sexist.
Everyone should have an equal right to be a fashion disaster.