If you Google the words “David Cameron” in the US and do not qualify them with “Tory party leader”, you are as likely to pull up a story about a once-promising American designer who went bust as you are the candidate to be Britain's next prime minister. Though this is clearly a coincidence, it's a notable one, for Cameron-the-candidate understands the power of clothes. In 2007 British GQ magazine named him as one of the UK's best-dressed men (its editor Dylan Jones later published a book of “conversations” with the politician); according to another GQ editor Cameron is “a politician who understands the news agenda is set as much by appearance as it is by words”. What's revealing is how he uses this knowledge.

He has, for example, not chosen to use it to demonstrate his everyman-ness. Aside from an appearance last month for a party speech in Milton Keynes in a Gap flak jacket, Cameron has left the job of mass market dressing to his wife Samantha, creative director of the up-market stationery and leather goods house Smythson, and creative dresser on the hustings, where she happily shows up in outfits from Marks and Spencer (albeit tailor-made), Topshop, and Reiss. It's a good idea, since when Cameron appeared at a casual event in baggy jeans and untucked black shirt, it left him open to sartorial attack: Shlub! Better to take the slings and arrows of outraged commentary in the armour of a well-tailored suit (see the Richard James number he famously sported during the Tory party conference worth ￡3,500 – although he only paid ￡1,181.25 for it).

Similarly, Cameron has not, generally, used his wardrobe to deny his background – Eton, Oxford, and all those words imply – by deliberately eschewing its uniform in favour of, say, a football shirt. He is enough of a student of history to have learnt something from former Tory leader William Hague and the baseball cap that came back to haunt him.