Coincidence or calculation?
If there is one sartorial constant that Valérie Pécresse does not get rid of, it is her flat, very smooth allure, contrasted by a loyal (if not royal) impulse for red.
She wears it in touches, or in a more emphatic way with a jacket, a coat.
And that makes you tick, until it raises questions.
“It looks good!”
professes Valérie Pécresse to journalists who come to ask her about her favorite shade.
“He has often been criticized for being tired, it allows him to display a certain pep”, notes Jamil Dakhlia, researcher in communication and politics and director of the University of the Sorbonne Nouvelle.
The trick would have been slipped to him by Ségolène Royal during a dinner organized in 2015. According to
Le Point
, that evening, the former presidential candidate reportedly recommended opting “as often as possible” for “bright red suits and jackets, never dark or pale colors”.
Has Valérie Pécresse taken good note of it?
It's hard to say, but it's been almost twenty-five years since she took up red, a passion that began when she put on the political costume with her mentor, Jacques Chirac.
symbolic colors
Since the candidate has been campaigning for the presidency, she has also bet on the blue, white, red triptych.
An obvious symbolism, that of the French flag, which we find illustrated in licked images on the mosaic of his Instagram account.
“Red allows him to stand out, and white, a color associated with feminism, to gain the upper hand over his presidential competitors.
This colorful argument could have been picked up by the left, but Valérie Pécresse did it before Anne Hidalgo, so she keeps the scoop, analyzes Saveria Mendella, doctoral student at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), specialized in fashion and its language.”
A visual effort made to position himself on a terrain that has not always been his favorite map.
And that'
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The candidate Valérie Pécresse gives a speech at the Maison de la Mutualité.
(Paris, December 11, 2021.) Getty Images
"I'm not flirtatious"
When she was a minister, she sometimes wore dresses.
But scalded by sexist comments, she ended up giving in to a "masculinization" of her wardrobe, opting mainly for jeans, which she favors on the field - with the exception of this day in 2013 when she wore them. one in the National Assembly -, and the trouser suit that she never leaves, like her colleagues in this presidential race.
“We are not on a Merkel case law which declines its suit jacket on an infinity of colors.
Nor on a singularization by the accessory, as can do Anne Hidalgo, who also chose to wear the uniform trouser suit in the countryside”, notes Jamil Dakhlia.
Where her colleagues stand out with a bit of fantasy, a piece of jewelery or even a scarf, Valérie Pécresse refuses to show any form of appetite for pageantry.
"I'm not flirtatious, I'm efficient, I'm not a woman who fusses," she said at the microphone of RTL last February.
For Jamil Dakhlia, "form meets substance", her sartorial message indicates that "if she were not a politician, she would dress the same way".
Bourgeois codes
To slip into a presidential costume reluctant to outward signs of wealth, Valérie Pécresse did not need to eliminate elements from her wardrobe that could be perceived as pretentious or too expensive.
She has never shown any ostentatious interest in luxury brands.
However, the stereotype of the girl from a good family sticks to her skin.
A cliché that she owes to her bourgeois education in Neuilly, to a polytechnician husband met on the bench of the grandes écoles, or even to an orderly family life in Versailles.
“His image responds to a certain number of codes that precede it, and which do not move, like his square and his suit, specifies Jamil Dakhlia.
We also note the wearing of the earring which is non-existent.
We know that the detail of the
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Valérie Pécresse attends the Ligue 1 match between Paris Saint-Germain and Toulouse FC at Parc Des Princes.
(Paris, November 7, 2015.) Getty Images
The Pécresse style is rather Zara, Mango, or Comptoir des Cotonniers and The Kooples, at least the brand names she mentions when asked what she wears.
“She plays the proximity card by citing mainstream brands, and shows that she does not dress in luxury.
But we suspect that it does not make the balances at Zara”, adds Jamil Dakhlia who notes a lack of coherence and “a faux pas” in his remarks with regard to the “compromising manufacture of certain brands”.
Like the Spanish brand, which faces accusations of forced labor from the Uyghur minority in China.
"It shows that she doesn't care."