Clothes maketh the man, we have been told. Looking at some recent examples of clothing controversies involving politicians, I would venture to suggest a more current formulation: clothes mythmake the moron.
We’ll deal with local examples later, like the time the premier of the Western Cape, Alan Winde, decided to turn up to a sitting of the Western Cape provincial legislature wearing cycling shorts, cycling shoes and bright pink socks, paired with — and this is perhaps the truly unforgivable bit — a suit jacket and shirt. But first, the strange case of Donald Trump and the Florsheim shoes.
The story, as broken by such luminaries as The Wall Street Journal, is that Trump has been giving identical black Florsheim shoes to male staff, cabinet secretaries and close allies since early 2026. Some fashion sleuthing from Esquire magazine identifies the shoes as “a cap-toe Oxford from the American brand”, most likely the $145 Lexington which, “in keeping with Trump’s desired feature set, boasts a ‘fully cushioned footbed for all-day comfort’.”
The circle of leathery privilege receiving these includes Vice-President JD Vance, secretary of state Marco Rubio, defence secretary Pete Hegseth, senator Lindsey Graham and Fox host Sean Hannity, among others. Multiple reports note that people who have been given these shoes are afraid not to wear them. Which means that, effectively, Trump’s shoe of choice has become an informal loyalty uniform in the White House and a visual marker of who is favoured by the Gracious Leader.
There are reports that Trump guesses his subordinates’ shoe size. He is, of course, on record as making dick jokes about this. When an unnamed politician claimed to be a size 7, “Trump responded to that info, Vance says, with the quip: ‘You know, you can tell a lot about a man from his shoe size.’”
Internet sleuths (so take this from whence it comes) have found a picture that seems to indicate that Marco Rubio was given a pair in the wrong size and was said to have worn the too‑large shoes rather than risk appearing disloyal to his easily offended master. Given the childish nature of this regime (Trump saying they’ll bomb a “totally demolished” hit site “a few more times just for fun” springs to mind), this seems all too believable. As you would expect, Rubio’s comically large pair is now a meme: clown shoes for a circus, as many people happily suggested.
Amateur semioticians, of which I am happy to count myself one, have pointed out how this sort of gift appears to be generous but in fact is threatening. To refuse the gift, and to not wear them, feels politically risky. One thinks of Derrida’s idea that everyday giving involves hidden violence, and that to give is to impose, to create a debt. The gift becomes a technology of control rather than a mutual good. Trump’s habit of guessing subordinates’ sizes (why not just ask?) and stockpiling identical Florsheim dress shoes, then monitoring who wears them, turns footwear into a compliance ritual: a gift that is also an order.
Having your staff all wear identical shoes is an authoritarian absurdity, but what gives it that unmistakable Trump flavour is the fact that Florsheim’s parent company, Weyco Group, is simultaneously suing his administration over tariffs.
According to NYMag’s Intelligencer, Weyco claims that Trump’s second‑term tariffs sharply increased the cost of its imported shoes, including Florsheim Oxfords. “In December, Weyco filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, asking the US Court of International Trade to ‘declare the president’s unprecedented power grab illegal’. The company also requested a refund, with interest, of the $16m it paid in tariffs last year, if the policy were struck down.” Guess the shoe’s on the other foot now.
It would be going too far to think of Florsheim as the shoes of choice for paedophiles, but I feel it would be remiss of me to not mention that Michael Jackson wore Florsheim shoes for dancing. CNN reveals that the star owned the Florsheim Imperial leather shoes, which he dubbed his “magic shoes”, and wore them while rehearsing his performance of Billie Jean for the Motown 25 TV special in 1983. That rehearsal marked the first time that Jackson did his iconic moonwalk dance, and the signed shoes were auctioned off at a starting price of $10,000. Maybe Rubio’s shoes will command a similar price one day, for collectors of fascist ephemera.
There is also a tale to be told about clothes being used to score political points in South Africa. The most flagrant example is the EFF’s decision to wear red overalls, hard hats, domestic worker uniforms and gumboots in legislatures as a deliberate visual claim to speak for workers and the poor, setting themselves apart from suit‑wearing elites.
Early in the EFF’s life, the ANC attacked the red overalls and uniforms as an insult to parliament’s dignity and pushed for rules to outlaw them. The EFF, in turn, framed the suits of other MPs as costumes of a disconnected elite, and used the visual clash on the floor, of robust red overalls in a sea of anodyne Western suits, as a constant, televised reminder of inequality.
To return to the controversy, if that isn’t too strong a term (it is), of Winde and his “one man, two lycra-squashed testicles” political moment, it’s ironic how criticism of him echoes criticism of the EFF. The ANC caucus in the Western Cape issued a statement saying it was “disgusted and dismayed”, calling him “pantsless and half‑dressed” and arguing that his outfit insulted the decorum and dignity of the legislature.
According to the DA, Winde had cycled that morning to the opening of a campaign for free melanoma screening at the Cape Town Cycle Tour Expo, then went on to the parliamentary sitting without changing fully. The message to voters is of Winde as a modern, accessible leader, a man of health and charity, rather than the more usual stereotype of the ANC as men of wealth and bad taste.
The suits that the ANC seem to love so much have been a bone of decolonising contention in other African governments. In post‑colonial Africa, many leaders have treated the suit as a visual symbol of lingering colonial power and worn African dress in legislatures.
Ghanaian and Nigerian presidents and MPs have routinely worn kente, agbada and other national or ethnic robes to parliament, making flowing, embroidered kaftans and caps part of official formal dress rather than the imported business suit. In Kenya, though, the National Assembly speaker has controversially banned Kaunda suits — the short‑sleeved, collar‑up, no‑tie safari suit that became synonymous with Zambia’s first president, Kenneth Kaunda — in favour of Western suits. So much for the postcolonial pushback.
A similar clash of ideologies occurred when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the Trump White House in early 2025, wearing his usual wartime uniform of dark military‑style pants and a tactical top, rather than a suit and tie. One of the Oval Office’s tame journalists pressed Zelensky directly on his clothes, saying: “You’re at the highest level in this country’s office, and you refuse to wear a suit. Do you own a suit? A lot of Americans have problems with you not respecting the dignity of this office.” It was an awkward moment, but you could sense Trump’s toes curling with pleasure inside his Florsheims.
These suits and shoes aren’t really about fashion, but a struggle over narrative authority. Trumpists tried to discipline Zelensky back into the costume of a grateful client state, while Zelensky’s refusal to wear a suit signals that he answers first to a battlefield, not a dress code in Washington.
Contrast this with Trump’s disrespectfully wearing one of his branded baseball caps (available on Trumpstore for around $45! Buy now!) while receiving the coffins of dead US soldiers at an air force base a few weeks ago, and it becomes clear that the attack on Zelensky is pure posturing.
The lesson in all this, if there is a lesson, is that power always dresses itself, even when it pretends not to. Whether it’s Trump’s goose-stepping Florsheims or Winde’s virtuous spandex, clothing is a costume in the theatre of control and aspiration.
Which side are we on? Are we with the rejection of colonial trappings signalled by the EFF’s red overalls (though not by their leader’s love of Western goodies), or do we prefer to walk in the Emperor Trump’s New Shoes? Ideally, we can find a third path that doesn’t involve being co-opted into political propaganda disguised as pageantry.
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