How to make a specific header in italics using pandas?

Question

I am using Pandas to make an HTML table. I want one of my column headers to be in italics. I can put the whole of a header row in italics like this:

import pandas as pd
col = pd.MultiIndex.from_arrays([["", "one", "one", "two", "two"],
                                 ["a", "b", "c", "d", "e"]])
df = pd.DataFrame(data=[["first", 20, 30, 50, 80],
                        ["second", 30, 40, 90, 20],],
                 columns=col, 
                 )
df_styled = df.style.hide(axis="index")
df_styled.set_table_styles([
    {'selector': 'th.col_heading.level1', 'props': 'font-style: italic;'},
], overwrite=False)

How do I put just one of the column headers "b" in italics?

Answer 1

You can include the physical position (col<n>) of column "b" in the CSS selector :

df_styled.set_table_styles(
    [
        {
            "selector": "th.col_heading.level1.col1", # << here
            "props": "font-style: italic;",
        },
    ],
    overwrite=False,
)

Output :