OPINION: When the Reagans rose to power, they made sure to look the part. The doyens of deregulation marked themselves out as special, distinct – Ronald even got away with wearing a stroller suit to his inauguration, while Nancy was known to smartly court the right designers. In their era, you could covet a Republican’s dress sense – without wanting to be one.
Like so much of their essence, the Reagans’ style didn’t trickle down. While the politics remain terrible, the modern conservative’s dress sense has become conspicuously bad. From Ron DeSantis’ oversized suits – more Beetlejuice than Balenciaga – to the MAGA crowd’s flaming red ties, much of the conservative political identity is indexed on poor fashion signifiers (libertarians in particular, like our own David Seymour, seem to favour Day-Glo colours, explosions of fuschia or canary yellow that really “pop” off of campaign hoardings).
In the UK last week, Rishi Sunak’s sodden blazer as he announced an early election was almost too on-the-nose. “The image of someone saying I am the only one with a plan standing in the rain without an umbrella is, to put it mildly, pretty farcical,” mocked Labour leader Keir Starmer.
Last year, the first photos of our new Government showed a near-total absence of posture or power. Christopher Luxon, David Seymour and Winston Peters emerged fresh off signing their coalition agreement with all the bonhomie of a disastrous stag night out at SkyCity.
There was Winston, perennially entombed in his double-breasted suit, David, forever sporting a gauche tie, and Christopher, the surly former CEO Aotearoa had turned to amid its identity crisis. Their hangdog expressions, puddling suits and sartorial conflicts grimly presaged the sort of Government they would run, and also spoke to deeper divisions.
It wasn’t always thus. Past National leaders have been trendsetting heads of state – look to Muldoon’s Government of big jowls and low growth, or Jim Bolger’s trending dad glasses and avuncular ties (even ‘first son’ Max Key was the ur-text of fuccboi fashion when you think about it). If Tommy Hilfiger is self-described as “preppy with a wink”, then our current Working Style-Government is preppy with a dead-eyed, nine-yard stare.
Their dress sense is a fusion of their aesthetic and political selves, rendering them a kind of everyman. They can index their power on a perceived relatability by coming across as anonymous. This political calculation was observed by the writer John Berger, in his seminal text Ways of Seeing. “The more impersonal they [politicians] are,” Berger wrote, “the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.”
Of course, it’s easy to argue that none of this really matters. Most of the time, the fashion of politics is only referenced as a novel way to scrutinise what female politicians wear, as if to insist that, even at the highest levels of office, image can enhance influence.
Consider Hillary Clinton’s comments during her Yale commencement address, where she fought to defend her bob: “Your hair will send significant messages to those around you. It will tell people who you are and what you stand for, what hopes and dreams you have for the world, and especially what hopes and dreams you have for your hair.”
But, at a time when Act’s Minister for Arts and Culture can’t identify a single New Zealand author, the accusation of philistinism in New Zealand politicians (an aesthetic extension of Michael Gove’s infamous “The people in this country have had enough of experts” party line), is genuine and worrying. This does not mean I want them to self-style in a modish rebellion à la Jojo Siwa. Still, it is striking that the simple task of wearing a clean-cut suit to nicely accentuate their shoulders appears difficult for our ruling political class.
Their myopic leadership style is best reflected by being the kind of political leaders who pull their assorted Budget Day looks from the EuroStyle sales bin. When glimpsing the press gallery shots of Seymour, Peters and Luxon in various states of austerity (personal and political), one thing is clear – you do not need a good style to rule, but you do need an identity, and it’s as if by shunning “identity politics”, the new right has forgotten to have any identity of its own.
In what could generously be termed research for this piece (read: stalking Stuff photographer Robert Kitchin’s Instagram) my browser history has been rendered into Baby Reindeer-levels of obsession for the Act Party. And, beyond the stilted delivery of their TikToks, or the garish blazers that make their list MPs look like extras from Glasgow’s Willy Wonka experience, a sole observation emerged: libertarians have the most chaotic dress sense of any party. Why do they all insist on dressing like carnival attractions? Their unbearably vivid attire is as chaotic as their policies – it looks like someone’s gotten into the pseudoephedrine.
Much like the apocalyptic reds of Trump’s tie collection, Seymour’s yellow ties are the choice of a man committed to being rich while looking cheap. The Act Party’s ties tend to clash so loudly they have the sartorial effect of hitting all the keys on a keyboard at once. Seymour’s token look is the same as his political life: a sham.
Conservatism equals tradition, so our National Party, by contrast, tends to aim for gin palace couture. But the closest our current right-wing comes to this is in the wardrobe of Winston Peters. Winston is so stubbornly set in his style, emblematic of a bygone era, the vestiges of which he still opines and the realities of which are still contended. Entombed in his suit since the 1984 snap election – he remains a paradoxical figure in that double-breasted suit, railing against champagne socialists.
Today, their global counterpart, Trump, is said to favour Brioni, yet almost always looks ill-fitted, with outlandishly long ties. For most modern conservatives, who wish to model the Reagans as the pinnacle of Waspishness, there is a crisis of conservative dressing, leading many of our own candidates to drown in puddling trousers, mismatched ties and oversized French cuffs.
Politicians tend to mug up their fashion statements as emblems of relatability (see AOC’s pavement-worn tennis shoes from her first year door-knocking), or tokens of the otherwise unsayable (Melania Trump’s “I don’t really care, do you?” jacket). Dress for the job you want, they say, and this has always been especially true for our politicians. But in Seymour’s case, that job seems to be mollusc in search of its shell.
The issue is that true style calls for real vulnerability, and this is anathema to the modern conservative voice.
In 1981, as the Reagans swept elegantly into the Oval Office, the New York Times reported that “looking rich without looking extravagant is part of what's in the air now.’’ While our politicians all squall over the perfect level of scuff on their leather shoes, or the subtle cues of their luxury wardrobes, only Winston Peters, a remnant of the Reagan era, takes his style seriously.
For the rest of the right, their new strategy is to co-opt that kind of ordinariness that translates as kinship, posing as the working man while standing in for the landlords. For Luxon, Seymour, and the rest of their respective parties, their style is best described by the word du jour in Aotearoa: redundant.
