Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Book of the year? One certain candidate is "Mao: The Unknown Story" by the husband-and-wife team of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. Neither has a good word to say about the Great Helmsman, who they portray as a depraved monster who did not even believe in the Communist ideology he imposed on the Chinese, while killing 70 million of them. Talking of the Mao, the Manolo, he of shoe-blogging fame, surprised his legions of admiring readers last weekend when he mentioned the tarnished tyrant in the course of a post about shopping. Responding to the Almost Girl ("Where Plato and Prada Meet"), who was soliciting views on "consumption, individuality, and the importance of fashion in our lives", Manolo condensed his political beliefs into a few short statements, and this one is most apposite for students of despotism:

2) Manolo loves the Capitalism! Nothing is more worthy of the ridicule than the fashion sense of the dictators, politburos, autocrats, and tyrants. For the example, the most horrible, deadening, life-sucking piece of the fashion ever invented, it is the Mao suit, for it reduces the individual to the mere cog in the ideological machine. Happily we live in the system in which the marketplace it is free to deliver to the peoples the beautiful clothes, enabling each individual to dress in the manner he or she chooses.

The Rainy Day loves the Manolo!