Mr Ouattara’s fans say he is a pragmatic free-marketeer with a cool head and clear ideas.
So is it all just the slick semantics of the marketeer keen to take advantage of an already nonplussed would-be suit purchaser, or actually a positive new development in men's wear?
Mr Blair, moreover, shares many of the principles that the Tories presumably want the new figurehead to project: he is a free-marketeer, an Atlanticist and an opponent of a European superstate.