With the Rise of Justin Trudeau, Canada's Suddenly ... Hip
Last October, at the
Louis Vuitton spring 2016 women’s fashion show on the outskirts of Paris, a male beauty in a white T-shirt, white-and-black bomber jacket and black pants waded into a blizzard of flashbulbs and cries of “Xavier!” As he took
his seat between Michelle Williams and Catherine Deneuve, fashion editors tilted their heads. Who was this man? Why was he in the front row?
A quick Internet search would have told them that he was the 26-year-old filmmaker Xavier Dolan,
a darling of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival and the star of a new
advertising campaign for Louis Vuitton’s Ombré collection who would go on to direct Adele’s “Hello” video.
His obscurity may have something to do with the fact that he is from Canada, the country that gave the world
ice hockey, the
snow blower and
Labatt beer.
But the notion that our neighbor to the north is a frozen cultural wasteland populated with hopelessly unstylish citizens is quickly becoming so outdated as to be almost offensive. Two weeks after the Louis Vuitton show, Justin Trudeau, the muscular, blue-eyed, social-media-savvy son of the former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, was
swept into power, along with his Liberal Party, in a surprise win over Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.
In the months since his election, Mr. Trudeau, 44, the 6-foot-2 self-described
feminist, who has been a television actor, snowboarding instructor and amateur boxer, has assumed the role of world leader with a heart. In December, to the delight of the Twitterati, he welcomed a planeload of Syrian refugees with the phrase
“You’re safe at home now,” while helping them into warm coats.
Vogue magazine wasted no time anointing Mr. Trudeau the
“New Young Face of Canadian Politics,” noting that “the new prime minister is dashing in his blue suit and jaunty brown shoes.” Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post could not resist running a 2006 photo of a louche Mr. Trudeau, in torn bluejeans and an unbuttoned black chemise, with the headline
“Hunky Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Is the JFK Jr. of Canada.”
United States citizens grimacing over a political and cultural landscape riven by a brassyreal estate kingpin, endlessly recycled superheroes and reality-show dopes may be forgiven for looking northward with yearning.
As Mr. Trudeau and his wife,
Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau (along with their three young children, Xavier, Ella-Grace and Hadrien), create a Canadian Camelot, they are casting light on a wider eruption already in progress.
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http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/15/style/canada-justin-trudeau-cool.html