I thought how strange it was that the Labour Party camera would zoom in on Mrs Muscat’s hands

Published: March 2, 2015 at 11:37am

MAX MARA 1

Max Mara

While watching the Labour Party television station’s news video of Mrs Muscat and her friend Ray Azzopardi, Malta’s ambassador to Belgium, in Brussels, I couldn’t help noticing that the cameraman deliberately zoomed right in on Mrs Muscat’s clasped hands.

You don’t do something like that by accident – you don’t zoom in on hands unless there is some reason for it, as with the engagement of Catherine Middleton to Prince William, when her ring was an obvious news-point.

So does she have a particularly good Bulgari ring there, I wondered, or is it her manicure?

Then I got an email from a friend (a man my age, not gay) who’d just watched the video and who said to me, “And what about that label?”

I hadn’t noticed the label. What label? Oh that label. I thought it was some kind of dry-cleaning ticket she’d forgotten to remove, which sometimes happens to me. My eyesight is not that great. So he sent me a picture.

Did Mrs Muscat ask the Labour Party cameraman to zoom in on her Max Mara label because the jacket was sponsored? (It’s what she and her husband do with The Northface.)

Or was it the cameraman’s own initiative, thinking how impressive it is that the Spouse of the Party Leader (now that they finally have one) wears Max Mara, and he must reveal this Eva-Peronesque fact (except that she wore Chanel couture) to the descamisados in their Bormla housing estate front rooms?

No, I think the real target market here is the small army of switchers who constitute Max Mara’s core clientele, and with whom the Spouse of the Prime Minister has been ingratiating herself over the last two years with invitations to tea and so on (m’ghandomx jaghmlu – though I must say the conversation level is probably well matched at least where some of the women are concerned).

I hasten to add that I thoroughly approve of Max Mara clothes, absolutely love that aesthetic, but think that the Spouse of the Prime Minister is very bad for the brand.