England’s version of menswear fashion week, the London Collections: Men, began yesterday and Prime Minister David Cameron was on hand to help start the festivities. Cameron hosted a reception at 10 Downing Street for the likes of Tom Ford and Tommy Hilfiger, where he was the first to admit that he doesn’t really know a thing about fashion. “I know so little about fashion that the two things I have been on the fashion pages for are not wearing socks with black shoes whilst on holiday—sorry about that one—and attending a banquet at the Guildhall, where…inexplicably my shirt separated and there was a rather embarrassing picture,” the Telegraph reports him as saying.

However, Cameron gave much style kudos to his wife Samantha who is a creative consultant to Smythson (she was the brand’s creative director before her husband took head office) and an official ambassador to the British Fashion Council. Of their shopping experiences together, Cameron said of his better half: “When I go shopping my wife doesn’t allow me to look around the store at all. I am put in a changing room and things are passed to me like you would pass food to a prisoner.” Though the PM did wax poetic on fashion’s economic advantages, “As far as I’m concerned fashion is not some add on, it is not some accessory to British economic policy: you are absolutely at the heart of the vision this government has.”