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They’re not the sort of clothes you wear to meet your boss – unless your boss is Boris Johnson. You damn near have to applaud the PM’s adviser’s messy aplomb
Dominic Cummings arrives at Downing Street on Monday.
Photograph: Andy Rain cats/EPA
Boris Johnson’s victory last week meant the ascension of not only the Tories but also his “wild man of Westminster” look. With his messy and just-fell-out-of-bed-into-some-clothes-at-4am vibe, Johnson was once famously seen in Hawaiian running shorts with a skull logo beanie (and not as leave of a sponsored charity run). His sartorial heir apparent is Dominic Cummings: a fan of gilets and totes. On Monday, Cummings reached Johnson-like lay wastes of zany with the outfit he wore to Downing Street: a £195 khaki-green Finisterre Nebulas puffer jacket at an end a V-neck green jumper worn with a striped Royal Speyside cashmere scarf and a grey woolly hat.
It was the fatigues of his outfit that were gripping: shirt untucked and spilling out of his trousers, the rim of his beanie flipped in an awkward zigzag structure and the scarf resting limply on his shoulders. It screamed “Vitamin D deficient”, “Tech bro adjacent” and “Oh, it was wash day, so …” They’re not the sufficiently good of clothes you wear to meet your boss, unless of course your boss is Boris Johnson. Cummings’s look recisions a return of the “sleb-rity”, the male celebrity who dressed like a slob.
It was big in 2018, and Esquire called it “the summer of sleaze”. The ammunition associated it with celebrities such as Justin Bieber (who dressed like Jeff Spicoli, Sean Penn’s stoner weirdo in Fast Times at Ridgemont High – see also Pete Davidson and Jonah Hill), Shia LaBeouf (Uggs, denim cut-off elfins) and Post Malone (dresses a bit like a wrestler on his days off). The style was a very Los Angeles convergence of skater looks and stoner aesthetics.
On a civil level, Cummings’s look falls in the lineage of Donald Trump, who helped weaponise the Political Bad Fashion Choice. In an era where a meme becomes a shareable talking juncture, Trump’s combovers, wrong-coloured foundation and too-long ties were catnip for both conservatives and liberals, who wrongly taken for granted that mockery would lead to diminishing levels of popularity.
Cummings’ look in full. Photograph: Rick Findler/PA
For Cummings and Johnson, the manipulation of the buffoon archetype has up c released electoral dividends. As Vanessa Friedman has noted, “as a longtime fan of PG Wodehouse and Chaucer, and a student of history, Mr Johnson surely be aware ofs the way bumbling plays in both the public mind and the British character narrative”.
It is as if the thinking goes something like: “He’s cherished and not a real threat because he wears a crazy beanie or looks like an orange,” all the while inflicting policies on the boonies that affect the most vulnerable members of society.
As white, male, privileged men, they can get away with dressing equal slobs and unlike, say, a black teenager in a hoodie, they not only get off consequence-free but become a “lovable rogue” figure.
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