“Even if underneath it all they are power hungry, they have to dress like a self-denying public servant with gravitas,’’ said Simon Doonan, creative ambassador at large for Barneys New York.
At a time of hostility toward the 1 percent, he said, “it’s important to appear insanely average.’’
Even if you are a multimillionaire.
Of course, “just folks’’ campaign wear isn’t new. The red plaid shirt that Lamar Alexander wore in the 1996 Republican primary and General Wesley Clark’s argyle sweater in the 2004 Democratic race are probably better remembered than any of their positions, as is Scott Brown’s man-of-the-people barn jacket from the campaign to fill the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s seat.
Some candidates are still dressing up, although Newt Gingrich, former House speaker, did appear after the Iowa caucuses looking sloppy in an open-collar shirt, Governor Rick Perry has periodically worn cowboy boots, and US representative Ron Paul’s suits fit so poorly that he might as well be wearing a sweatshirt.
But Robin Givhan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning observer of style, said this campaign seems more sartorially informal than past races. The “million-dollar question’’ is whether dressing (down) to impress works, said Givhan, a style and culture correspondent at the Daily Beast and Newsweek.
“If you are someone like a Mitt Romney, who is known to the public as a business person, as ‘a suit,’ and you’re suddenly wearing jeans and crew-neck sweaters, that might not seem authentic.’’
Or, as Nick Sullivan, fashion director of Esquire magazine, put it: “Clothes do communicate things about you without you having to say anything, even if it’s a lie.’’
Indeed, the casual Romney and Huntsman - with their trim builds, tans, good hair, teeth, and shirts - look more like lawyers working on the weekend than the middle-class and blue-collar workers they are wooing.
