Dress code says a lot about politicians — and the Pope

PERHAPS Charlie Haughey was the ultimate free spirit. He did not even own his own clothes.

Luke Ming Flanagan TD is a comic strip version of Charlie Haughey with bad dress sense. Haughey was famously outfitted by the renowned Parisian shirt maker Charvet while his lavish lifestyle was subsidised by Ireland’s then largest draper Dunnes Stores. If he had stuck to the reliable St Bernard brand for his shirts, history might be different. Ming is as attentive to dress as Haughey ever was. His style of street grunge, no tie and his shirt buttoned up to the collar, is a uniform as confected as anything from Charvet. His pony tail tells you, if you didn’t already know it, that he is not one of ‘them’, he is one of ‘us’.

Ming, Mick Wallace and Richard Boyd Barrett radicals all; systematically use their clothes to project themselves as part of ‘us’ and not the ‘them’ they purport to oppose. Vastly skilled at getting attention, they are clever enough to know that when what they say is forgotten, it is image that advertises them best. They use clothes as a code that allows them appear to oppose a system that in fact they actively participate in. Sinn Féin TDs do the same. Jackets and ties come off in the Dáil chamber, shirt sleeves are the boiler suit of the oppressed. It is the picture not the policies that count.