At the risk of giving the frightening impression that WitnessLA is turning into a social justice and fashion news site, a few words about Michelle Obama….and about Michelle’s clothes.
On Tuesday night at Century City, somewhere in the midst of the screaming-till-you-had-no-voice and crying (frequently) and the tossing of confetti in celebration of the fact that, against what sometimes seemed to be impossible odds, that the miracle had actually happened and Barack Obama had really and truly been elected President of the United States, the women immediately around me—a therapist, a novelist, a school teacher, a dance maven, and an attorney— kept saying, “And we get her as our first lady! Can you believe it? Oh, my God, oh, my god, isn’t it amazing! Seriously, can you believe it? We get Michelle!”
This is not insignificant. For more than a few voters, one of the big sales points in Barack’s favor, was his wife.
She wasn’t the woman behind the guy, she was the woman right beside the guy. During the long months of the campaign, if we ever doubted who Barack was, we looked at her, and we got it. He was the man married to the no-sh*t-sister, the strong, wicked-smart, beautiful woman with an excellent career of her own but who also made sure the huz knew—presidential run or no presidential run—that he’d better be there for the parent teacher conferences and to take the girls trick-or-treating. From the 2004 speech onward, we understood that we could trust him because he was strong enough to be married to her, and one could see in a single instant—event back then at the now-legendary keynote speech—that she would tell Barack in very clear terms when and if he went off track, or if he ever (don’t-even-think-about-it, dude) starting believing he was all that.
It was also really nice to notice that she and her husband are obviously hot for each other. (Listen, values voters, you want a program that promotes the virtues of marriage and family in these divorce-happy, single-parent-haunted United States? Well, you got one now. It’s called Barack and Michelle Obama.)
Barack is intellectual, wonky, erudite, inspiring and cool under pressure. Michelle is fun, funny, super-smart, tough-minded, fierce and hot. And a grizzly bear mom, too. Woe betide anyone who messes with her kids. She’ll eat you without a thought. We also like the griz mom thang.
And we like that Michelle likes clothes. Out of all the women in politics in the last, say, 30 years, Michelle Obama is the first person we can imagine going shopping with.
She’s a bargain" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen> huntress, and she also buys chain store off-the rack, but she likes quirky designer-ish stuff too. She has fun with clothes, isn’t afraid to take chances with fashion (and to occasionally, mildly blow it).
She also sends the message that the days of the boring power suit are over. You can be a strong woman and a girly-girl. Plus, with her additions of pins, neckline bows, and those diamond dangles on election night, she makes each garment her own. She always wears the clothes, they don’t wear her.
Michelle Obama knows that we are serious women —don’t ever doubt it—-but we can still accessorize, babe.
Today’s LA Times style section has a nice little piece on Michelle’s “real-world fashion sense.”
If the black-and-red dress Michelle Obama wore for her husband’s victory speech Tuesday is any indication, she is poised to be her own kind of style icon in the White House. The straight-from-the-spring-runway dress, which she paired with a black cardigan, was a major statement, the patriotic red bursting out of black like a firecracker out of the night sky. You either loved it or hated it, but you couldn’t ignore it.
Right. And in this crazy, scary, hope-and-opportunity-filled time in our country’s history, the occasional pause to talk over the (metaphorical) neighborhood back fence about whether or not we liked Michelle’s red and black dress….is just fine, thank-you-very-much.
Good grief, Celeste. You may be beyond help, but if you got the card of that swooning therapist, you might give it a try. No, wait, she’s drunk the Kool-Aid and is beyond help herself. Well, the novelist can write about the event and you all, the “dance Maven” can spin steps about it, you can write poetry and blog about it, while the attorney might just go to work sporting a more daring broach or two. (Anyone who actually liked that tangerine disaster she wore is utterly hopeless lost by definition — seems it cost upwards of $3500, not the mere $2000 you quoted earlier. The Times is right about one thing, you sure did notice it. And her cheap off-the-rack things were played up brilliantly by the DNC, whereas poor Palin got thrown under the bus on her relatively fewer extravagances, as a full-fledged candidate. Her husband Todd was at least as entitled to a few decent suits as spouse Michelle was.)
The LA Times clip you reference quotes Doris Kearns Goodwin on Michelle’s fashion sense, one thing dowdy Goodwin herself so totally lacks, as do mainstream political pundits and power-suited female politicians.
But all the pundits are right that this is the first time in memory that we have a First lady who could be your neighbor, someone you run into at the mall or Neiman’s or on Melrose or Target, you never know which, mixing and matching her individualized wardrobe, and that is a really good example, something I heartily do myself and endorse. They also correctly point out that these days the lines between the labels and stores are so much looser: who’d ever have thought that Neiman’s would feature in their own stores, advance “openings” of brands available a couple of weeks later at Target? And that they’d be sell-out crowds? If that’s one thing America is showing the fashion world, that you can look hot without being clad in Dior (like Sarkozy) or Galanos (like Reagan), and yet look just as attractive as a woman who’s a slave to 6-figure styles, that’s terrific.
Good grief. It’s obvious that liberals and the press are on a mission to make the Obama’s the next royal family to succeed the Kennedy’s.
WBC, I like your idea about how, as a group, my women friends and I can work our obsession into performance art.
Look, the enthusiasm level is likely going to be obnoxious for a while, but I’ll try to keep out of the psycho range if at all possible.
No, Celeste. Keep it up. Everyone needs to know just how insane Obama fanatics are and will become. Here’s a movement you can get behind: Plans are being made to promote a national holiday for Barack Obama.
Why don’t you get behind immediately renaming Topanga Canyon Road to Barack Obama Parkway and the schools likewise?