Last weekend, there was Beyoncé in Marseille, and Bernard Cazeneuve in Créteil. There, in front of an audience of hysterical fans and enamored VIPs, the former Prime Minister launched with great fanfare a movement called “The Convention” intended to make people forget the Nupes and bring the left back to power in 2027. Inflated to bloc, Bernard Cazeneuve took the opportunity to sing the praises of social democracy, appeasement, harmony and François Mitterrand… His greatest hits, in short.
Since he was a show, very show in Créteil, former President François Hollande, former Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo and Bernard Cazeneuve dropped their jackets, revealing their white shirt while taking the risk of a likely halo forever affect their credibility. Because the left necessarily remembers it: after losing his footing in 2015 during the PS congress in La Rochelle due to a shirt soaked in a torrent of sweat, Manuel Valls never really became the same again.
By dropping the jacket that day, the superstar Bernard Cazeneuve revealed much better than a halo. On his shirt indeed appeared initials allowing us to remember that this detail was not always pure ego coquetry. Historically, the initials made it possible to facilitate the work of governesses in large houses, by helping them to attribute clean linen to its proper owner.
The current Minister-President of Wallonia Elio Di Rupo had released this eternal bow tie which has become an immutable stylistic signature, as it was in its time that of Le Corbusier. But, if the French architect preferred the bow tie to the tie for fear that the latter would drag on his work table and degrade his drawings, what could Di Rupo fear? To go unnoticed?
In the same genre, finally, how not to notice the purple fedora worn by Jean-Michel Ribes, the ex-boss of the Théâtre du Rond-Point and eternal companion of the French left, installed in the second row on Saturday? Thus topped with a headgear inspired by that worn by actress Sarah Bernhardt in the play Fedora, in 1882, it could have stolen the star from Bernard Cazeneuve… But, no, not that evening. Not the big night.