Andy Burnham’s understated black look at Whitworth gallery launch

With Labour blocking Andy Burnham from returning as an MP, the so-called 'king of the north' appeared on Monday at the launch of a Class Ceiling report at the Whitworth gallery in Greater Manchester wearing a simple black V-neck jumper and dark denim jeans. It might not sound like much.

But that is the point of Burnham’s largely unnoteworthy look, which tends to involve Left Bank intellectual-adjacent black-on-black and stands in direct contrast to the tie-wearing colleagues he left in Westminster, the story says. Ever since his move away from Westminster politics, Burnham has largely ditched the suit and tie and favours black bomber jackets, black jumpers with no shirt underneath, black blazers and black T-shirts, with the odd workwear jacket thrown in.

Last week he wore a white T-shirt and an apt, workwear-esque navy jacket to unveil a 'concrete plan to reindustrialise the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution'. Andrew Groves, professor of fashion design and director of the Westminster Menswear Archive, says Burnham’s 'all-black workwear look is as calculated as any Westminster suit, just aimed at a different audience'.

Groves adds that its casualness 'rejects parliamentary polish and signals Mancunian proximity: practical, ordinary, and deliberately outside London political dress codes'.

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