Saturday, November 23, 2024

Victoria Starmer’s Downing Street dress – and her message to the British middle class

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So many key questions spring forth – ones you probably won’t find Laura Kuenssberg and her colleagues addressing. Is £295 henceforth a new Labour fiscal policy? It has been widely acknowledged in the fashion industry as a middle-class sweet spot – i.e., high enough to make an item seem reassuringly aspirational, but not obscenely so. 

Also, is anyone styling, guiding or otherwise personal shopping for Lady Starmer, who, ever since we have seen her in public, has not put a sartorial foot wrong?

It is never easy dressing for a life of public scrutiny as a woman. When you are as private as Victoria Starmer, determined not to drown in her husband’s wake, it is doubly so. The former solicitor, as we all know, is an occupational health worker for the NHS and has two teenage children, who in accordance with their wishes, did not accompany their parents on their progress up the famous street.

Also, to judge from all the glad-handing and air-kissing that went on between her and the aids outside her new home, she has not been as disengaged from her husband’s career as reports have suggested. So when on Earth does she find time to shop; let alone work out an appropriate approach to public dressing and squeeze in the impressive-but-not-Penny-Mordaunt-scale blow dries that are already becoming a hallmark of her public appearances? 

Perhaps she was always naturally stylish. Her strapless wedding dress from 2007 when her future husband was plain old Keir, is a good indicator that this may indeed be the case. It really hasn’t dated. 

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