Let's be honest: David Cameron and fashion are not on friendly terms. Awkward acquaintances at a push. There was the glorious black-leather-shoes-and-no-socks" incident while holidaying in Tuscany. The toe-curling use of Converse when he attempted to cultivate his ice-cold 'Dave C' persona. And who could forget him slumped at the Lord Mayor's Banquet with his shirt wide open, as if reenacting the parting of the Red Sea with his gut? And this is just off the top of our heads. Yep, our PM is many things, but a man of style and panache he is not.
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Fortunately, this is neither a shock nor surprise to our glorious leader. At a press event celebrating the London Collections: Men at Downing Street, attended by the likes of Tom Ford, GQ ed Dylan Jones, and brand spanking new British Fashion Council chair Natalie Massenet, the PM openly ridiculed his catalogue of faux pas.
"I am obviously not a great exemplar of fashion, but I have done my best tonight," he said, before talking through his threads: a Richard James suit, Oliver Sweeney shoes and a Charles Tyrwhitt shirt. Oh, and let's not forget his Marks & Spencer underwear, an admission that he conceded fell into the "too much information" bracket.
But then, with some devilish political maneuvering, he tried to put his fashion sense (or lack thereof) on Samantha Cameron: "When I go shopping, my wife doesn't allow me to look around the store at all. I am put in a changing room and things are passed to me like you would pass food to a prisoner".
So he's saying we should blame Sam Cam — the one who's always decked out in fashion's bright young things, the one who sits f-row at London Fashion Week, whose sister works for Vogue and who used to be creative director at Smythson? Sorry, Dave, we're not buying it.
Of course, if he'd pinned his lack of sartorial direction on Nick Clegg or George Osborne, that would've been a very different story.
Photo courtesy of the BFC