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Next time Angelina, do check the label

By Guy Adams in Los Angeles
Friday, 30 January 2009

Wrong way round: Angelina Jolie arrives at the 15th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles

She is one of the most glamorous women on the planet, whose every red-carpet appearance is scrutinised by an army of photographers and tooth-sucking style commentators. But Angelina Jolie stands accused of an extraordinary fashion faux pas.

The actress sparked heated debate yesterday, after it emerged that the striking, but somehow odd-looking, blue dress she wore to Sunday's Screen Actors Guild awards in Los Angeles had been worn back to front.

Sharp-eyed pundits who pored over the pictures of Jolie negotiating the event's 200-yard red carpet noticed that her dress bore a striking resemblance to a $798 (£560) ball gown showcased at catwalk previews of designer Max Azria's spring collection.

The cornflower-blue frock had the same kimono-style sleeves and waistline as the silk dress worn by Azria's wafer-thin models, they remarked, together with identical detailing on the skirt. But its plunging neckline appeared to have been reversed to show off her back.

After the influential Red Carpet Fashion Awards website noticed the dress-reversal, fashion commentators began discussing the crucial issue of whether Jolie had been aware that it was on back-to-front.

Some speculated that she had accidentally got dressed the wrong way round. In a celebrity version of The Emperor's New Clothes, they said neither her partner Brad Pitt nor dozens of domestic staff had been brave enough to tell her of her wardrobe malfunction. Others described the move as an intentional, and ingenious, way for the 33-year-old actress to wear a dress that would otherwise have exposed an enormous portion of cleavage. They also claimed that reversing the garment allowed Jolie to showcase the collection of tattoos on her back.

Jolie's stylist, Jen Rade, issued a short statement to USMagazine yesterday, saying that her client had intentionally wore the dress that way round to make the outfit "more blouson".

But not everyone was convinced, noting that when Jolie discussed the garment in a red carpet interview with the TV show E! on Sunday, she made no mention of the fact it was on backwards, commenting merely: "I just like to be comfortable, I see what comfortable options are out there."

Cynics also noted that, if she had intended to expose her tattoos, the dress was hardly an unqualified success: the v-shaped neckline actually covered up half of the artworks.

Either way, the affair left some influential fashion commentators with egg on their faces. The Los Angeles Times critic Booth Moore, for example, failed to notice that the dress was on back-to-front when composing a lengthy analysis for Monday's newspaper. "Jolie is one of the few celebrities who has developed a signature red carpet look: drapey, goddess-like dresses that show off her tattooed shoulders, natural hair, minimal make-up and jewellery. Some have criticised the look as dowdy, but I would call it self-aware," he wrote.

"She's using clothing to control her image. In a way, Jolie is telling us she's transcended fashion and won't be at the whims of whatever designer or jeweller happens to be the highest bidder. That alone sets her apart from the starlet pack, giving her integrity as an actress and mother, instead of just a mannequin."

Attention will now turn to Jolie's outfit at next month's Oscars, for which she has been nominated for the Best Actress award for her role in Changeling. Meanwhile, whether she reversed the dress deliberately or not, the actress can at least reflect that she is following in a small yet memorable show-business tradition.

During the 1990s, the adolescent rap duo Kriss Kross sparked a trend for wearing jeans and t-shirts back to front. Meanwhile, at the 1999 Oscars, Celine Dion famously wore a white Dior tuxedo, backwards. That outfit, topped-off with an extravagant white fedora hat, was variously described as "bizarre" and "unflattering", and in some quarters even saw Dion compared to a "pimp".

Brad Pitt interview: why I had to face my own mortality

On the release of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the actor talks about his girlfriend Angelina Jolie, their six children – and how the film changed the way he looks at life.

By John Hiscock
Last Updated: 5:21PM GMT 29 Jan 2009

Unrecognisable: Brad Pitt takes the lead role in his latest movie, 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'

Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Brad Pitt has a reputation for being cheery and affable when he is making a movie. But not this time: the dark shadow of death hung over the set of his latest film, T he Curious Case Of Benjamin Button.

Angelina Jolie's mother died a month after they began filming, director David Fincher's father died, as did writer Eric Roth's mother. And, to top it all, the film's controversial theme of ageing forced the actor to confront his own mortality.

"I walked away realising that time is short," he says, talking on a sound stage at the Warner Bros studios in Burbank, California. "I don't know if I have a day or 10 days or 10 years or 40 years. Am I halfway or am I close to the end? I don't know, so I have to make sure I don't waste those moments in any kind of pettiness or bitterness or laziness, and that I surround myself with the people who are most important to me.

"Angelina and I are together because we can enhance each other. I don't want to waste any time because I'm with company I really, really love."

As well as Angelina Jolie, the company includes their adopted children Maddox, seven, Pax, five, Zahara, three, and their biological babies Shiloh, two, and twins Knox and Vivienne, who were born in last July.

To make the most of the time he has left, Pitt and Jolie are already planning to add more children to their family. "We haven't found any reason to stop yet," he laughs. "It's chaos at times, but there's such joy in the house. I look and there's our boy from Vietnam and our daughter from Ethiopia, and our girl was born in Namibia, and our son is from Cambodia, and they're brothers and sisters, man. They're brothers and sisters and it's a sight for elation.

"We have the capability to give a child a home, and let me tell you it's selfish, too, because the reward has been extraordinary."

The twins, he says, mean double the pleasure. "One seemed simple, and it's just double the fun. It's surprising how soon their personalities have started emerging. But it's really important that everyone gets their individual time as well as group time together.

"We were four before, and we got into our rhythms and it worked. Then someone new comes in, and it discombobulates the movements for a moment, but then you settle in again and it just all works. Everyone's pretty well integrated. It's not the first time new kids have come in."

Pitt is feeling a little jet-lagged, having flown in from Berlin, where he and the family are living temporarily while he films the Second World War story Inglorious Bastards for Quentin Tarantino.

He received a Golden Globe best-actor nomination for his role in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, in which he plays a man born old and wrinkled and then ages backwards. Aged 50, he falls in love with a 30-year-old woman (Cate Blanchett) and they must come to terms with the relationship as they age in opposite directions. "It's about looking back on your significant moments in life," he says.

The film's story and the deaths of relatives of people around him set him thinking about pain and loss. "I had a friend who worked at a hospice, and he said people in their final moments don't discuss their successes, awards or what books they wrote or what they accomplished. They only talk about their loves and their regrets, and I think that's very telling.".

He has not yet discussed matters of life and death with his children. "Our oldest is seven and at the point where he's asking these questions, but the others are too young, but I wrestle with it now.

"It's hard to help them fully comprehend this, and I don't know if they're meant to comprehend it yet, in all fairness, but it's a big issue."

Their filming schedules and charity work take Pitt and Jolie around the world, and the children go to school in whichever country they happen to be at the time. "We're a very nomadic family, and it works for us," says Pitt.

"The value of it is that the family becomes the core, and the kids may not understand the places they see at this early age, but I know it's seeping into their consciousness. We move quite well, and I don't think it's taking its toll. We have to think about schooling, though, and we're in an international programme, so wherever we go it's the same curriculum."

While filming demands keep him busy, his charity work takes up even more of his time. Like Jolie, he has learned to make good use of his celebrity status to promote the causes close to his heart, such as fighting poverty and hunger in third-world nations. A keen student of architecture and a close friend of leading architect Frank Gehry, he has also been using his money and knowledge to help rebuild areas of New Orleans devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

He says the project is going well: "We wanted to help people to be able to return to the city because they were in limbo and wanted to come back, but whole neighbourhoods had been wiped out. We saw this as an opportunity to be a proving ground for high-performance buildings and a greener approach.

"Now, for an area like this that suffered such injustice to suddenly become the greenest, most advance neighbourhood in the US is an incredible achievement. This time next year we'll have more than 100 homes up, and there's no reason this shouldn't work outside New Orleans. There's something at play here that is bigger than just a starting point."

Pitt sees his duties as being a companion and father, making movies and helping charitable causes. "What's valuable to me has become clearer as I've got older," he says. "To me, it's about the value of your time and your day and the value of the people you spend it with. It's about me being a strong father and guide and a good match for my significant other. Then, if I'm going to go to work, it must be something of value to me.

"I'm much more experienced now, so I can find films that are interesting quicker and cut out the films that don't really matter. It means more to me now because my kids are going to see them, and I want them to be proud."

'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' is released next Fri.

Joaquin Cortés: 'Dancing is my wife, my woman'

Beneath the sex-god image is a shy, sweet man who only wants true love. Best not mention the string of supermodel liaisons, then...

The Big Interview by Christina Patterson
Friday, 30 January 2009

It's always a bit scary interviewing a sex god. And when Elle Macpherson describes a man as "sex on legs", you can be pretty sure he's a sex god. When Emma Thompson prostrates herself before him, and when Madonna adores him and so does J-Lo, and when Naomi Campbell and Mira Sorvino are among the women whose hearts he has (allegedly) broken, it's probably safe to say that he has a little bit of – well, je ne sais quoi or, perhaps more appropriately, atractivo sexual. Male fans include Tarantino, Armani, Bertolucci and Sting. For Joaquin Cortés isn't just a sex god. He's the most famous flamenco dancer in the world.

When you watch one of his shows, you can see why. In Live at the Albert Hall, for example (also available in an unlive version, for repeat viewings and lingering close-ups), when he appears in a pool of light, his perfect physique encased in a T-shirt and trouser combo you can only describe as a second skin, and when those bulging arms (surely the Platonic ideal of arms) flex and those taut thighs bend, something is unleashed that feels like the dance equivalent of a volcano. The figure stamps and bows and leaps, at times galloping like a horse, at other times shimmying and quivering. At a certain point the black skin is replaced by a black suit, black shirt, white tie and pink shoes, like an extremely lithe Mafioso. Later, the black suit is swapped for a red suit. Later still, the shirt disappears. By this time, the long hair has escaped from its neat bun. We are watching a tap-dancing Christ – in need, perhaps, of a little Timotei – a tap-dancing Christ with, now, a naked torso. The torso, it goes without saying, is a thing to behold. Ecce homo.

The torso, however, is covered when I meet the real, live Joaquin Cortés, in a posh hotel in Kensington. Cortés is draped on a chaise longue, posing for the photographer, and when I smile and wave, he smiles and waves back. He doesn't – I realise instantly – have a clue that I am here to interview him, but he smiles and waves back because he is polite. He is also, it becomes clear when he emerges from his session with the photographer, extremely sweet. Shorter, slighter and altogether less imposing than that messianic figure on the Albert Hall stage, he is less sex god and more nice young man obediently undertaking the tasks his agent has set him; nice young man who's rather touchingly eager to please.

What he isn't, however, is a linguist. After 20 years on the international circuit, including a six-month spell in London, Cortés still feels unable to conduct an interview in English. "My English is terrible," he announces in a heavy Spanish accent. "No speak English. I think this year, practice every day. No time for working, going out for lessons, but now maybe in the future." Well, maybe, but it's not that bad. Let's have a go, I suggest. Let's take the, er, bull by the horns. "No," he says, but in English. "I'm very shy." And actually this man who has performed to hundreds of thousands of people around the world, who has been in a number of films, including Almodovar's The Flower of My Secret and Carlos Saura's Flamenco, and who has danced at the Kremlin and for President Bush at the White House.

A slightly hesitant ambassador, perhaps, for flamenco – and a real ambassador, too, for Joaquin Cortés, the most famous gypsy in the world, is also the EU Ambassador for the Roma. Having been in Italy at a time last year when the Roma appeared to be the scapegoats for an entire nation, I can see the need for a Roma ambassador. "Terrible situation," says Cortés when I mention it. "Terrible!" Does he feel he has been able to achieve anything in the role? He nods vigorously. "The only way is to show them that they are not complicated people," he says. "The gypsies can live together with everybody without any problems. All the cultures have a problem with individuals, but not gypsies in general. Being a gypsy is not problematic." Er, right. And how is the situation with the Roma in Spain? "The situation is very much better because I think the flamenco culture and the flamenco artists change the mentality of the people in general about the Roma people. It has to be a revolution to integrate all the people."

For Cortés, flamenco was in the blood. Born in Cordoba, he moved to Madrid when he was five, but his family retained the flamenco traditions of their Andalusian roots. Joaquin was dancing and singing as a small child and then, inspired by his uncle Cristobel, a well-known flamenco dancer who danced with Nureyev, started dancing professionally at the age of 12. "It was surprise for me," he declares. "Dancing is my wife! My fair woman!" When he was 15, he joined the Spanish National Ballet, where he became principal dancer, performing all over the world. And then, when he was 18, he started experimenting with a fusion of contemporary dance, classical ballet and flamenco. And all hell, or the flamenco equivalent of it, broke loose.

"It was shocking!" says Cortés. "It was a surprise. Flamenco critics, more academic, didn't like it. They have the tradition, it's like ballet, it's academic city. The flamenco has one academic city too. They had a problem with a person who is young and came with new things, or a revolution. In the beginning, they didn't understand."

What they didn't understand, it seems, was the wilful violation of a tradition that had endured for centuries, a tradition that was all about dignity and pride. For a start, in flamenco you wore lots of clothes. You didn't bare your torso. Cortés did. Why? "Why not?" he replies. "Many dancer dancing nude! The gypsy culture originates in India," he explains, "north India, when many centuries ago the gypsies hunting the witches. The ancient traditions of the gypsies dancing around the fire, dancing without clothes and with one skirt." At this point, English fails him and the room erupts into a blizzard of Spanish. It sounds like an argument, but in the end Cortés's manager, Monica, translates. "He really wants you to understand why he went back to his origins," she explains. "He thinks that to be a dancer in your own style, it's very important to find out where you're from. And when he was criticised for coming out, with his chest bare, he was criticised by a lot of the traditional flamenco people, but he says that they were criticising themselves, because that's how we started. You either stay like that, with that small frame of mind, or you open your eyes and find out what it was."

Well, I think that's cleared that up. I'm beginning to see, in fact, some of the gypsy passion that inspired Pasion Gitana ("Gypsy Passion"), the second international tour by the Joaquin Cortés Flamenco Ballet company he founded in 1992. At the heart of it, and at the heart of the flamenco experience, is duende, that hard-to-define state which has something to do with authenticity, something to do with emotion, something to do with soul. What does it mean to him? "Duende," he says, opening his hands as if to a god, "is the magic moment, the magic mystery moment, a special moment" – and then, once again, English words prove inadequate. "For him," says Monica, "it's when he's on stage and it's like he's levitating. He's in his own world, and it's like he's creating at the same time." And isn't this rather hard to achieve somewhere like, say, the Royal Albert Hall? Cortés looks baffled. "No!" he says. "I prefer a big audience! You feel the heat and the roar of the crowd more, so you get deeper into your art."

If he prefers a big audience, he's certainly got it. In Spain, he can't walk down the street without being stopped. How far, I wonder, is that a pleasure and how far is it a problem? Cortés frowns. "It's a pleasure [to stop] for the Roma people," he says, "but I no like the paparazzi. They no respect my private life." And, er, how shall I put this: how does he feel about his reputation as a sex symbol? "I like," he replies "when in general women come to my shows to watch Joaquin Cortés, sex symbol, Latin lover. It's nice because these women..." But what these women do is clearly beyond his English and Monica once again takes over. "He's saying," she says, "that people like seeing him as a Latin lover and maybe come and see the show for that reason, but then they get into the dance form. To see that playboy side of him is not what he's interested in. What he's interested in is his dance."

And has being, um, commodified in this way made him feel any different about his dance? Cortés again looks baffled. "Tell me, tell me!" he begs as I explain to Monica what I mean. When she translates into Spanish, he looks horrified. "He doesn't," says Monica "think of himself as a commodity at all. Those things usually only last for a short period of time. He has created his art, he's very thankful that he's been able to take it out to most of the world and that people have accepted it and enjoyed it. So that's what he focuses on."

Cortés has been quoted, amazingly, as saying that he doesn't think he's particularly good-looking. Is that true? "No handsome!" he says fiercely. But he's always known he's attractive to women, hasn't he? "No!" he shrieks. Monica intervenes again. "He really does think he's been misquoted. He says, 'I look in the mirror every morning and know I'm not. It's just the way it is.' What he said was that he prefers an attractive woman to an absolutely drop-dead gorgeous woman. He's much more interested in an attractive personality."

Of course. That would explain why he has dated so many models. At this point, however, Monica has to leave, so I have to address the question to Cortés via his Spanish production manager, Fernando. Neither of the two men looks amused. "Relationships with models," says Fernando after a torrent of Spanish that seems to go on for a very long time, "are by chance". But surely he must meet some women who aren't models? Would he, for example, consider dating an intellectual woman?

Cortés, smiles, leans forward in his chair and gives me a high five. Oh my goodness. I think he thinks I'm asking him out. The truth is that Cortés, who will be 40 next month, dreams of true love and a family, but so far has failed to find them. And, just before Christmas, his mother, his real true love, died. There are, he says, "no words" for his grief. His soul, says Fernando, has gone.

And as I gaze at the sad, sweet man whose smile has faded, I find myself hoping – praying even – that we might start seeing less of Joaquin Cortés sex god and more of Joaquin Cortés's soul.

Paris Haute Couture Week: Jean Paul Gaultier

Jean Paul Gaultier's Haute Couture collection proved once again that his creations were accessible to all generations by his front row status. Stars that also adorned the catwalk included 51-year-old former-model-turned-designer, Ines de la Fressange.

By Hilary Alexander, Fashion Director in Paris
Last Updated: 4:48PM GMT 28 Jan 2009

Former French fashion designer and model Ines de la Fressangea, a model and, right, French singer and actress Helena Noguerra, all wear creations from Jean Paul Gaultier's spring/summer '09 Haute Couture collection Photo: REUTERS / GETTY

Haute Couture is ageless, as well as almost priceless; as Jean Paul Gaultier’s spring/summer collection proved, in Paris earlier this afternoon.

In the front row were Jane Birkin’s 26-year-old-daughter, Lou Doillon, alongside the perennial pop star, Kylie Minogue, 40. A few seats down was the eternal French screen goddess, Catherine Deneuve, an immaculate old age pensioner of 65.

To further prove the point, the irrepressible Gaultier, still regarded as the enfant terrible of fashion after more than three decades in the business, persuaded one of the French catwalk’s most famous stars, Ines de la Fressange, 51, to make a comeback after an absence of nearly a decade.

Their ages pretty much mirrored the generational span of Gaultier’s couture customers.

“My clients are like a big ballet of all ages. There’s about 70 in all, some 18 years old, the majority around 30, some 50-plus and some of 70. I’m not complaining,” Gaultier said.

Whether his collection was tailored to suit their varying sensibilities, however, was a moot point, considering the emphasis on transparency, décolletage and swimsuit-inspired evening gowns.

Staged in the Gaultier headquarters, a former French Socialist party property, the collection took inspiration from bullfighting and corsetry. Prints were inspired by Chinese calligraphy.

A cream, one-shoulder swimsuit became an evening gown by the addition of a strategic ‘sarong’ of cream tulle. Toreador-style trousers came in see-through Guipure lace and passementerie or were topped with tiny boleros over naked breasts. A cream, quilted and embroidered, fitted coat-dress was cutaway at the back, with a ‘bustle’ of feathers over a pair of matching lace knickers.

Spider-web-embroidered, lace and tulle flamenco gowns revealed the bra and knickers underneath. ‘Corset cages’, based upon turn-of-the-century dressmakers’ dummies, were constructed from chain-mail, velvet, satin ribbons, crystals and marcasite, and worn over flesh-tone chiffon dresses and stocking-style leggings.

Even Gaultier’s signature trench-coat, in classic satin from the front, was see-through from the back.

It goes without saying the traditional couture finale outfit for a bride, featured a model in a see-through wedding-dress.

Paris Haute Couture Week: Valentino

They came, they saw, they interpreted; sadly Pier Paolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri – accessory designers at Valentino for 10 years and now the joint creative directors of the legendary Italian fashion house – failed to conquer.

By Hilary Alexander, Fashion Director in Paris
Last Updated: 1:20PM GMT 29 Jan 2009

var modVP; function escenicOnTemplateLoaded() { if (brightcove.instances['myExperience']) { bcExp = brightcove.getExperience('myExperience'); modVP = bcExp.getModule(APIModules.VIDEO_PLAYER); modVP.setVolume(0.50); } } In the words of an old Roman: They came, they saw, they interpreted. But sadly, Pier Paolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri, accessory designers at Valentino for 10 years and now the joint creative directors of the legendary Italian fashion house, failed to conquer a new world of haute couture design in their debut, spring/summer ’09 collection in Paris last night.

The clothes were beautiful, there is no denying. The cut was impeccable. And the workmanship, as you would expect, was extraordinarily accomplished. But overall the collection failed to achieve that blinding flash of creativity that is the mark of the true couturier’s art.

The true couturier, Valentino Garavani, who retired last year, sat front row with his long-term business partner Giancarlo Giammetti, and a bevy of the Valentino party faithful.

He was greeted like a conquering hero as he entered the Grand Amphitheatre of the Sorbonne. He beamed, he smiled and, as the models paraded on a mirrored circular catwalk in the finale, he appeared to be holding back the tears.

But he, along with many of the audience, could not have failed to recognise the collection as a blast from the past, rather than a lightning bolt pointing to the future; a fabulous fossick around his archives, but not a fashion moment which transcended a faithful rendition of his master’s works.

An ivory cashmere suit with neat, gently-fitted jacket, a rose effect at one shoulder and an A-line skirt to the knee, was very Valentino; as was a cream silk short coat and dress, bordered with bands of coral at waist, neck cuffs and hem. Ruffles, ostrich feathers and lavish, jewelled ornamentation all spoke of the former couturier’s love of delightful femininity and de luxe embellishment. There were even short and long chiffon gowns in Valentino Red, faithfully fingertip pleated in the manner the skilled “petit mains” in the house’s atelier have been perfecting since the sixties.

There were some surprises. The blaze of iridescent jade, emerald and aquamarine for a jewel-box group of evening gowns – shades not often seen in the old Valentino palette. The heels were stacked, not spiked. And there was not a handbag to be seen.

Since Tom Ford left Gucci, a belief has prevailed in the fashion business that the brand is all-important, the designer secondary. Time and again it has proved not to be the case in ready-to-wear.

In haute couture, where an all-consuming passion and a love for the entire process of design from the first blinding flash of inspiration to the creation exploding onto the catwalk, are as vital as skill, technique and experience, the designer is the most necessary ingredient. Haute couture must also have that awe-inspiring element of magic and mystery, which only the designer can produce. But you don’t watch a magician when you know how the trick is performed.

House husbands: Are you man enough?

More and more men are swapping PowerPoint for potty training and embracing the role of the stay-at-home father, says Casilda Grigg.

By Casilda Grigg
Last Updated: 5:02PM GMT 13 Feb 2009

It's 7.30 on a cold winter's morning and three bleary-eyed children are getting ready for school. Alarm clocks are ringing, eggs are frying and the kitchen table is a sea of cereal packets, chewed pencils and exercise books. It's just another frantic weekday morning in a typical British family home, except for one small detail: there's no mother in sight. She left half an hour ago in a sharp suit and a cloud of Je Reviens. This morning, just like any other day of the week, her jeans-clad spouse – aka house husband – is trying to tie shoelaces, pack lunches, blow noses, and get the children out of the house and off to school, without tears, tantrums or mishaps.

Across the land, more and more men are giving up work to become full-time fathers, putting their children's welfare before their professional ambitions, and bucking the trend for selfish career-driven parenting recently criticised by The Good Childhood Inquiry. The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal that there are 192,000 house husbands in the UK, compared to 119,000 16 years ago.

Some are doing it through economic necessity, others as a positive lifestyle choice. And as the recession starts to really bite, numbers look set to rise further as thousands of redundant men find themselves marooned at home, reliant on their wives' earning power. So fashionable is this new phenomenon that a film is in development, starring Anna Chancellor and John Hannah, about five stay-at-home fathers.

Today, fathers are often closer to their offspring than ever before, but equally there are thousands of children growing up without any contact with a loving male. ''Whether it's changing a nappy, or reading a story, the average father is more involved in his children's lives than he was 30, 40 or 50 years ago,'' says Professor Jay Belsky, director of The Institute for the Study of Children at Birkbeck. ''But over the last 30 years men have also been disappearing from children's lives.''

For many fathers who step off the career ladder, the real challenge is not the childcare itself but the isolation. ''There are all sorts of issues,'' says one stay-at-home father, a civil servant on a two-year sabbatical for childcare purposes. ''Can I join Mumsnet [the networking site for mothers] as a man? And how about mum and toddler groups? Do I go along anyway even if I feel uncomfortable about it?"

For others it's the small challenges, whether it's doing up the tiny buttons on a toddler's coat, or getting the neck of a jumper stuck on a child's nose. ''The hair is one of the hardest things,'' says house husband David Stedman, 40, whose daughter Thea is five. At a recent ballet class, Stedman was forced to admit defeat when the teacher asked him to put Thea's hair in a bun with a net and pins. ''Another five-year-old did it for me.''

But such blips are of no consequence to the cherished child of the stay-at-home dad. ''What children need is love and boundaries, as well as structure and routine,'' says Dr Frances Goodhart, a consultant clinical psychologist. ''That can be provided on a day-to-day basis by either parent.'' Where men bring a fresh approach is in their style of parenting. Experts – and the fathers themselves – say that fathers are often more physical and playful. ''I'm stricter than my wife,'' says stay-at-home father Jonathan Payne, 50. ''But I'm also more larky and tactile. I'll lie on the floor and muck about with the kids.''

British mother-of-three Laura Watts, who lives in Holland, believes that men excel at childcare but often flounder when it comes to the minutiae of domestic life. ''My hunch is that men are less good at the day-to-day running of the household. It's all those little extras like remembering to send birthday cards or buying the children new shoes."

True though this may be, for many fathers the struggles of multitasking are amply rewarded by the deep closeness they develop with their offspring. But that isn't to say the picture is entirely rosy. Divorce lawyer Vanessa Lloyd Platt has warned of the strain such role swapping can place on marriages. And even when such arrangements are happily consensual, the trade-off can dent a man's confidence, particularly if he feels a loss of kudos. PR guru Julia Hobsbawm revealed in a recent interview that her stay-at-home husband, Alaric Bamping, 54, rarely accompanies her on social engagements. After a day at home looking after their three children, he feels he has nothing to talk about.

Perhaps the way forward for a happy, healthy society lies in parents sharing the childcare and the breadwinning, rather than exchanging roles. ''In Amsterdam there are lots of men and women who work part-time so they can spend time with their kids,'' says Laura Watts. ''At my children's school, half the parents picking up their kids are men and they do perfectly normal jobs. Part-time work is built into Dutch society. Now isn't that just wonderful?''

Great Works: Leviathan (1651), Abraham Bosse and Thomas Hobbes

British Museum, London

By Tom Lubbock

Friday, 20 February 2009

English illustration is a strong tradition. There are many books that can hardly be imagined without their images. Edward Lear's nonsense rhymes come with his nonsense drawings, and Beatrix Potter's tales are more than half-told by her watercolours. The world of Lewis Carroll's Alice books is partly the creation of John Tenniel's pictures – and ditto Dickens' Oliver Twist and George Cruikshank's.

William Blake is the supreme joiner of text and image. Meanwhile, there are many less graphic artists who have used their talents to visualise Paradise Lost, The Pilgrim's Progress and Gulliver's Travels. The tradition of English illustration has typically been devoted to the fantastic and visionary.

Yet one of the most fantastical and memorable examples of the tradition isn't connected to a work of imagination. It's found in a famous treatise of political philosophy – on the first page of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan: The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil. This illustration is an Anglo-French work: drawn by a French artist, Abraham Bosse, but designed in collaboration with the philosopher. It shows a giant which represents Hobbes' idea of the absolute state.

The text along the top quotes the Latin Bible, from the Book of Job, and describes the monster Leviathan: "There is no power on earth that can compare with him." The giant wears a crown. He rises above a landscape, and wields a sword and a crozier, emblems of civil and church authority. But his most striking aspect is the way his torso and arms are made up of numerous densely crowded little figures. He is a swarm-man.

As Hobbes puts it, "...the multitude, so united in one person, is called a COMMONWEALTH; in Latin, CIVITAS. This is the generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather, to speak more reverently, of that mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defence."

The Leviathan giant embodies the answer to Hobbes' great fear, civil war. (He was writing after the English civil war, in exile in France.) The populace agree to surrender all their individual powers. They are incorporated into an undivided, conflict-free body, the all-governing, all-embracing state.

The mass of people is gathered like a congregation. They face inwards, reverently, towards the head of the mortal god, who gazes out. The figures in the multitude are very similar, wearing the same respectable hats and cloaks. They are all male. In other words, they represent the 17th-century franchise – though within that, no class distinctions are registered. The people are equal in their submission.

An image of total subordination, then? But like many meaningful images, its meaning can become ambiguous. Hobbes gives his giant a head and hands of its own, organs which are not composed of little people. The power of the state is not just a matter of uniting the many into one body. Hobbes wants to suggest that the state has its independent ruling power. A Royalist, he's thinking of a monarchy.

And so a division can open up between the king-head and the people-body. A potential conflict arises. Perhaps the giant can direct and control the throngs he's made up of. On the other hand, they are his anatomy, and he can't move without their collective cooperation. The theory may say that the multitude have merged into a single organism. But the picture shows an intractable creature, whose head and hands are free, but whose physical action is bogged down in clustering crowds.

Seen like that, the Leviathan giant is not a symbol of a monolithic tyranny – but nor does its head-body division threaten the kind of civil war that Hobbes dreaded. Oddly enough, it makes a good image of a constitutional monarchy, rule restrained by recalcitrant democratic processes.

But this great archetypal image can be seen in numerous ways. See it as a big body packed with little bodies: maybe it was an inspiration to pictures of the Wicker Man. The first one appeared, published by the eccentric English antiquarian Aylett Sammes, 25 years after Leviathan. Or see how the giant's body arises from behind the horizon, out of nowhere. It's the same way that The Colossus emerges beyond the landscape in the painting now de-attributed to Goya. One way or another, fantasy is this picture's destiny.

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