Iran's President Becomes Unlikely Fashion Icon

Najmeh Bozorgmehr and Gareth Smyth, The Financial Times:

Iran's high and mighty may poke fun at the simple sports jacket of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, their fundamentalist president, but the versatile garment is so fashionable with many of his young supporters that businessmen are ordering more from China.

"Every day, a couple of youngsters, including students, come in and ask for what they call 'Mr President jacket' or 'Mr Ahmadi-Nejad jacket'," says Ali, a shopkeeper in Bab-Homayoon, adjacent to the old bazaar in southern Tehran and a bustling shopping haunt for the less well-off. "The jacket the president wears is cotton and generally sells at $20."

Mr Ahmadi-Nejad's jacket - previewed during the election and paraded during his UN visit in September - is usually beige or off-cream. The president keeps it unbuttoned, with his shirt collar defiantly open in a country where wearing a tie is seen as gharbzadegi, or intoxication with the west. READ MORE

The son of a blacksmith, Mr Ahmadi-Nejad won June's elections with a populist appeal to put "oil money on people's sofreh (dining cloth)", scooping votes from people who considered him a simple and sincere man who might improve daily lives.

Since he took office in August, the president has campaigned against corruption and the good life which he says is enjoyed by far too many officials. Mr Ahmadi-Nejad refuses to receive visitors in the elegant Sadabad palace, built under the former Shah, and has removed exquisite Persian carpets from the presidential office to a museum.

The president's own choice of clothes reflects his image as a man of the people. For the past 24 years, Iran's presidents have all been clerics, and the last incumbent, Mohammad Khatami, was known for his fine dress sense, wearing different coloured robes, including a famous cream one, with elegant shoes, a carefully cropped beard and a fine black turban denoting descent from the prophet Mohammad.

But when their expectations of Mr Khatami were disappointed, Iranians dubbed him Fariba, a woman's name meaning charming but mischievous. Such disenchantment helped Mr Ahmadi-Nejad storm to power with a call to spread wealth far more fairly.

Other than a cleric, it is relatively rare in Iran for a senior official not to wear a suit, and Mr Ahmadi-Nejad dons not-too-smart suits for many meetings with foreign dignitaries.

One visiting foreign official even noticed the president's shoes, which "seemed to have been bought from Tehran's bazaar for $10".

But it is the stand-alone jacket that has - for good or ill - caught popular imagination, even though the style was not unknown before Mr Ahmadi-Nejad became an unlikely fashion icon.

The humble jacket is hardly the rage in affluent northern Tehran. In the trendy shops of Qaem mall, off Tajrish square, are the latest designs of jeans and jackets copied from western brands like Nike, Gap and David Bowie. "What do you mean by 'Mr Ahmadi-Nejad jacket'? Are you kidding me?" says Shahab, a young shopkeeper with long hair and sideburns.

But Shahab is too much the businessman to miss an opportunity.

"You know, if it really becomes the new fashion, why not?" he says. "I like it! We can slip an Ahmadi-Nejad jacket on to the model in our window."