Communist Stylewatch

Hasta la Victoria, Siempre

WWP was on her travels this summer.  In September I took a very grown-up, relaxing trip to a port town in Majorca with First Serious Boyfriend, and in June I packed up my backpack and flew to Havana with Friend From University, where we traversed the top half of the island by coach.  Cuba was many things to me.  Communist (obviously), sexual (unashamedly), joyful (largely). Yet the description which has been stuck on the end of my tongue every time friends ask, is time-warped.  Cars run on black smoke and gaffa-taped exhausts, computers run on Windows '98 and the people run on rum, salsa and cigarettes.  No, really.  The radio plays Greenday and Kelly Clarkson circa 2001.  And the women dress from a time WWP is struggling to pinpoint.

A typical Cuban chica's daywear wardrobe would consist of: cotton shorts - strictly half an inch too long or five inches too short; an emporium of jersey halterneck tops embellished with diamante (delete as appropriate) Playboy bunny/'Sexy Biatch'/marijuana leaf; a selection of brightly coloured bras with thick straps (to be worn with the halternecks); an assortment of footwear, ranging from plastic white gladiator sandals to plastic white stilettos; and a jewellery box filled with even more diamante for good measure. A night spent at the Casa de la Musica? Never before have hemlines tested the boundaries modesty like they have been in Havana. 

After spending only two weeks travelling through the country, it is impossible to grasp how exactly a communist system dictates lives.  I know that people queue for their bread in the morning and I know that the tax rate is incredibly high. I know that there is a prominent commodity-based black market, and I know that Cubans, who are generally the most gregarious and welcoming of people, will do almost anything to scam a few Pesos from an unsuspecting couple of English tourists.  However how this trailer trash look started, I do not know.  'Time-warped' doesn't cover it - the '90s in the Western world may have been a decade of fashion sloth and purgatory, but at least we matched our underwear accordingly to our crop tops and distressed flares.  Cuba, I love you, but surely Communism is no excuse for looking like a ho.  And if it is, let's hope an Iron Curtain is never dropped over us again.  

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Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner

Can you say hot?  Argentina seems to have a knack of producing captivating politicians, a knack that Britain devastatingly fails at...Teresa May with a good blowdry and substantial amount of make-up?  I think not.

Cristina and her beautiful (I assume Chanel) tweed generally appear to stay out of trouble in the political spectrum.  Mirroring that foxy Peron lady she followed her husband into politics, gaining just the amount of the presidential vote needed to slyly slip herself into the top job in 2007.  She is an advocate of equality, consumption and fairness and her political style is ballsy and ultimately feminist.  Feminist in the sense that everything she believes is clearly right and she'll aggressively ignore you until you apologise - sorry Brazil, that's just the woman Argentina is.  

However sick this President must get of being compared to Miss Evita, the comparisons are so obviously there to clutch at that it would almost be rude to ignore them.  As Fernandez beautifully put it herself, she is the Eva Peron with  "the hair in a bun and the clenched fist before a microphone."  Add to this a wardrobe so exquisitely large that she is often late to diplomatic meetings because she is getting dressed and you have the archetype of what a female Head of State should, and successfully can, be.  Oh, and since her husband's death she has only worn black:  Queen Victoria, you have been put to shame.