In defence of the gilet
The PM’S special adviser looks more country fair than running the country, but it’s a symbolic choice that may even come back into fashion one day, says Stephen Doig
At what point does something you wear become your “signature”? James Dean had his white T-shirts, Old Blue Eyes had those dashing suits and trilbies and, at the opposite end of the scale, Dominic Cummings has his trusty gilets. Come rain or shine, triumph or parliamentary disaster, they form part of his meticulously crafted, deliberately dishevelled way of dressing that’s quite unlike anything we’ve seen swinging so casually through the doors of Number 10.
Looking as if they’ve been hauled from a dog hair-strewn car boot and shrugged on with nonchalance, they form part of a get-up that’s remarkable in its disregard for the position Cummings finds himself in as Boris Johnson’s special adviser.
It’s a look that’s more Devon summer holiday than Downing Street; crumpled linen shirts, ripped jeans (sometimes with the waistband of his Calvin Klein underpants on show) and scuffed trainers. He’s like a dad chaperoning his teenagers at Wilderness Festival, if said dad was to swap overpriced street food at the main stage for summit meetings during the most tense period in recent British history. So why does Cummings choose to dress this way?
Part of it can only be a tactical ploy to appeal as a sort of Brexit Everyman. Photos from 2001 show Cummings in smart jacket and shirt, and whereas most men segue from youthful stylistic abandon to something more upright and sartorial, Cummings seems to have taken a Benjamin Button approach instead.
So why the fondness for the gilet, an item mostly relegated to country fairs and pottering around the garden centre? Because it all adds towards a sense of an anti-establishment kind of get-up; the gilet, as the name suggests, is French in origin, meaning vest. It evolved as attire for the European peasantry of the 16th century, designed as a cover-up over clothes to deal with the hard graft – and occasional blood splatter, be it animal or your next-door neighbour – of proletarian life.
Fitting, then, that it should outfit Cummings as he battles it out behind Johnson. The gilet is the waistcoat’s
more rag-tag, rough and tumble brother. While the waistcoat is part of braces-and-cufflinks City boy dress, the gilet is built for hardier terrain and, like the ones that Cummings wears, is padded, quilted and fleecy in varying degrees to act as a defensive layer.
Which, psychologically, could be the reason that Cummings feels so drawn to adding them to his shirt and jeans combination. He could just as easily add a blazer, but instead he opts for gilets as a sort of talismanic protection; when the entire country is speculating on who this man is and how he’s come to be such a driving force of no-deal Brexit, his attire is acting as a barrier; and an attempt to show dynamism too.
A blazer is behind-thedesk and paperpushing, a gilet is get-on-with-it-and-gung-ho, particularly when paired with a Billabong long-sleeved T-shirt, the traditional attire of surfers and students.
Cummings’s reliance on a wardrobe crutch is also a telling trait of the middle-aged man’s approach to dress: the 47-year-old has adopted them as a life raft in the stormy waters of men’s style, which have shifted dramatically in the past decade or so. Perhaps we can forgive him his penchant for an item that has connotations of country cosiness. Other examples of wardrobe linchpins for middle-aged men are the latesteve Jobs with his black
roll-necks, Gareth Southgate with his waistcoats and David Cameron with his welded-on navy holiday polo shirt.
This is understandable; finding an item you like and running with it has its own sense of security (and, in the case of Southgate, caused a rush on waistcoats) and you’re safe in the knowledge that fashion’s cyclical nature means everything comes back into the trend orbit sooner or later.
I’d suggest that Cummings slip on a blazer, or even a suit, but then I’d be special advising the special adviser, and that’s a Matrix-style leap into alternative Brexit reality I’m loath to
make.