Italy: the world’s most stylish nation

Nick Thomas
ast Monday’s London Evening Standard carried as its second front-page lead the latest scandal to hit Formula One motor racing, (the first lead was a horrid tabloid story about a predatory lesbian teacher), and it saddened me, because this is one of the few sports I actually enjoy watching. But what arrested my attention was the picture of the story’s subject, Flavio Briatore, disgraced former Renault team chief, snapped with his wife at the Venice Film Festival. It was the most Italian photograph I’ve ever seen.
Now, if I were saying this because the man looked shifty, cowardly, greasy, inefficient or divorced I would be well out of court, for racism is unacceptable when negative. There are those who would argue that it’s unacceptable even in positive stereotyping, but to them I say: “Get a life: people are different.” I would kill for a Jewish dentist, prefer the company of Irishmen in the pub, and would happily hand over the management of my personal accounts to a Chinese six-year-old.
And the reflection this picture prompted in me is that the Italians are just so damn stylish. Their political establishment might be ludicrously volatile, and their economy dependent on what happens under the counter, but when it comes to elegance they make the sartorially hubristic French look like a bunch of computer geeks on a gaming session at a Goth bar.
In the snap in question Briatore’s hair looks like a clump of cirrus cloud caught in a gale, but this is merely a fashionable pose of insouciance. He is wearing a beautifully tailored doublebreasted jacket over a black shirt undone to the second button, and it is instructive that in Italy, of all places, a black shirt is not considered tasteless, because dress is so much more important than political history; in this country, following nothing more significant than the failure of a Labour government to be merely competent, red ties will be unobtainable, except in charity shops, for years to come. But what makes the portrait is the man’s face, with those kind, sensitive eyes, and the beguiling laughter-lines around them. He has been condemned for effectively fixing a race by ordering a driver to crash in order to favour his team-mate, which is pretty heavy stuff; but you’d be charmed if you sat next to him at dinner.
Then there’s the wife, a model 30 years his junior, one of those symmetrically faced, voluptuous, intimidating babes in which Italy specialises, her earrings not chafing her shoulders only because her neck’s so long, beaming at the camera with the smile of a 1960s Ford Corsair, only with crayon-red lipstick. Look at that picture, and you forget what awful things Briatore might or might not have done to bring him to this point in his life. You just think “well done, chum”. You don’t know, either, whether these people are personally delightful or frightful, but you’d be jolly pleased to see them turn up to your party. That’s Italian charm.
By contrast, on page seven of the same newspaper there was a picture of the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, who could quite plausibly be our Prime Minister next year, albeit with a minority administration that lasts about six months. He was snapped while visiting a factory, and so the fact that he’s wearing ugly protective glasses and his hair, caught in industrial flare, looks
as though it has been highlighted by a hand-printing toddler, is not his fault. But his shirt collar is too big, and overlaps at the front across the clinically obese knot of a tie that is woven in reptilian scaly silver, relieved by a lurid purple stripe. Personally, I think that the leader of a major political party whose neck happens to be, say, size 15 and a quarter, would be justified in having a few shirts made to fit him, though at party, not parliamentary expense. He could save on the ties, tasteful examples of which can be obtained from any street market at minimal cost.
Unfortunately Nick Clegg, like too many politicians in all parties, just doesn’t understand that dressing well inspires confidence. Or maybe he does, but doesn’t know how to do it. In many respects the Lib Dems are a rather Italian party, what with all the in-fighting and vanity and hopeless grandstanding. But they’ve really got to work on the style.