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Power-dressing

Revenge of the power suit

Dylan Jones

Wednesday, 12th December 2007

Politicians now know they must look the part, says Dylan Jones

Two thousand and seven will be remembered as the year when power dressing returned with a vengeance. It was the year when Putin proved that if he weren’t lording it over Russia, he could give Bruce Willis a run for his money. While Dubya kicked around at home, supping Diet Coke and wearing Crocs, Vladimir — who has never come across as a military fetishist — was wading in the water, baring his chest for all to see. It was the year when Sarkozy (a man more popular in Washington than our own PM) wore mirrored Ray-Ban aviators and, at the behest of Cecilia — a parting gift, perhaps — started wearing three-button Prada jackets rather than the more patriotic two-button Dior. It was the year when Hu Jintao, King Mohammed VI and even Thabo Mbeki reacquainted themselves with the power suit. Jintao, the leader of the world’s single largest nation, still dresses like any middle-American Fortune 500 CEO — the sort of man you don’t notice walk into a room until everyone else stands up.

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Spain’s secret kingdoms

Simon Courtauld

Few tourists see the buildings, birds and flowers of Leon and Burgos, says Simon Courtauld

Climb every mountain

Jeremy Clarke

Jeremy Clarke tries the high life at the Carlton hotel, St Moritz

The mad hatter

Joseph Connolly

Joseph Connolly reveals a life-long obsession with hats

Acropolis now

Henry Sands

Henry Sands says Athens’s new museum is missing its Marbles

Glasgow East is Brown’s dirty little secret: a hideous, costly social experiment gone wrong

Fraser Nelson

Glasgow East symbolises — as few other places in Britain can — the fact that the problem Labour faces is not just lack of leadership but lack of mission. What is to be seen in this constituency encapsulates and dramatises Labour’s abject failures to comprehend, let alone tackle, the nature of the poverty which grips our council estates.
For all the latest on the Glasgow East by-election, visit Coffee House