ELIZABETH DAY’S VERY UNLIKELY FASHION CRUSH
She’s no fan of Boris guru’s politics. But our blushing You columnist has a confession...
MUCH has been written about Dominic Cummings. The Prime Minister’s most senior adviser has been accused of everything from manipulating democratic outcomes to hatching nefarious plans to dismantle the Civil Service.
He has been called Boris Johnson’s Rasputin, a shadowy strategist and the most dangerous man in Europe. The architect of Vote Leave has even been immortalised on celluloid, played by Benedict Cumberbatch in a Channel 4 film.
Depending on your politics, you either think of him as an instinctive genius or an agent of unimaginable doom. But I would like to leave politics aside and concentrate on something else about Dominic Cummings. Namely: his fashion choices. Because something odd has happened to me over the last few months.
I have been looking at snatched photos of Cummings hurriedly going in and out of Downing Street, and I have found my opinion of his sartorial choices shifting from utter disdain to a sort of grudging approval.
I can’t explain it. But somehow, without my realising it, Dominic Cummings has quietly become my unlikely fashion crush. I think it’s because he’s so cavalier in his tastes, riding roughshod over conventional style rules in much the same way that he wants to rip apart the European Union. There is a certain daring elan to his wardrobe.
In December, he was pictured in a green puffer jacket and grey jeans slouchily stuffed into a pair of piratical biker boots. There was a long striped scarf dangling nonchalantly from his shoulders, seemingly providing no warmth as it hadn’t been wrapped around his neck so was clearly just there… for what? For effect? He wore a grey beanie that
looked expensive but he had styled it informally, the edges askew as if to say: ‘Yes, this might be cashmere, but I wear it with the insouciance of an off-duty French actress who knows how to layer.’
It was 90s- boyband meets gap year technology start-up whizzkid meets genteel country squire. The whole ensemble should not have worked and yet it did. Also – and this is not always a given with men of a certain age – the garments looked clean and well-pressed.
If you study him carefully, you’ll notice that all of his clothes are neatly presented, even if they are oddly agglomerated like a malfunctioning Google algorithm.
Unlike his boss, who always looks as if he might have a two-weekold tomato soup stain on his shirt, I bet Cummings smells of fresh laundry detergent.
He favours linen shirts, with the collar half- up, half- down, once again giving the impression that he cares just enough but not too much. Occasionally, he’ll throw in an oversized branded hoodie, channelling the latest athleisure trends as epitomised by the high- end fashion brand Vetements.
Sometimes he’ll wear a padded gilet, which is slightly too long to be reasonable. The whole thing is anarchic yet not impolite.
Then there’s the accessorising. Cummings likes anonymous black rucksacks and tote bags, but the totes are always carefully judged: the colours are neutral ( apart from the one time he used a Vote Leave bag with the logo picked out in a splash of red) and they are the good quality tote bags, with sturdy seaming and wide handles, not the cheap spindly ones that gather like dust in kitchen corners. The tote bags say: I do not need a briefcase to be confident.
He doesn’t get everything right. The shoes are, for the most part, uninspiring black trainers. The black-rimmed rectangular spectacles could do with an update (a pair of tortoiseshell Oliver Peoples would do him nicely). But, overall, there is something strangely satisfying about the way he dresses. His clothes are the clothes of a man who is clearly trying but does not want to be seen to be trying too hard, which is the unspoken ethos of all the best sort of fashion.
It’s put me into quite the ethical quandary. On the one hand, I disagree with almost everything he stands for politically. On the other, I have to admit to being curiously hypnotised by his mad sense of style. I do wish he’d stop meddling in our political system and design a line of men’s clothing instead.