Mrs O on fast track to status as a style icon

The US first lady’s appearance on the cover of ‘Vogue’ confirms her rapid impact on the world of high fashion

COPIES OF the March issue of Vogue magazine, with Michelle Obama on the cover, are expected to fly off the shelves when they arrive at Irish newsagents today. Featuring the US First Lady photographed by Annie Leibovitz, in a fuchsia silk shift designed by 26-year-old Taiwan native Jason Wu (who was also responsible for her white inauguration gown), the issue was due to be delivered to Easons today, according to a spokesperson. Inside is an eight-page spread featuring photographs of Obama taken in Washington on January 20th.

America’s first black first lady is fast becoming a world fashion icon with every sartorial choice she makes closely scrutinised and appraised. She is only the second first lady (and the 18th black woman), to have appeared on the cover of the hugely influential US magazine since 1929, the other being Hilary Clinton in December 1998.

In the interview with Andre Leon Talley, Obama makes no apology for her love of clothes. “First and foremost I wear what I love. That’s what women have to focus on; what makes them happy and what makes them feel comfortable and beautiful. If I can have any impact, I want women to feel good about themselves and have fun with fashion.”

Her lithe, statuesque figure and ability to wear colour and clean-cut clothes with confidence and elan has set her apart from other presidential wives. “Pragmatism not glamour is what matters when she gets dressed,” opines Vogue describing her style as “fearless”.

According to the New York Times this week, “no first lady since Jacqueline Kennedy has had a more instantaneous impact on fashion. Whatever Mrs Obama wears, people notice and very often buy”.

Her versatile choice of clothes from middle market high street retailers like Gap and J Crew, along with up-and-coming young US designers like Maria Pinto and Jason Wu, has transformed their fortunes and endeared her to millions.

After the inauguration, J Crew’s website crashed as its share price rose by 10 per cent. Jason Wu’s clothes are now being given the same prominence as Dior in the window displays of leading stores in the US. There are unprecedented demands for tickets to his show in New York next week.

A revealing website www.mrs-o.org founded last September by a self-described style-obsessed New Yorker called Mary Tomer and dedicated to “a modern style icon in the making”, has daily posts with photographs and video clips of Obama at various functions with fulsome, forensic details of everything she wears and the designers she chooses, including jewellery, accessories and shoes (mostly flats).

The collar of her green inauguration dress by Isabel Toledo, for instance, wasn’t part of the dress as many would have thought, the website discloses, but was a vintage jewellery piece, a Victorian sash pin acquired from a Canadian vintage dealer. Elsewhere she has worn signature pieces by Belfast-born jeweller Tom Binns, now resident in California, notably an ornate necklace at a Vogue fundraising event in New York.

The website was the first to reveal that Obama does not use a stylist nor deal directly with designers as has been the common practice with other first ladies. Instead her wardrobe is managed by a boutique in Chicago called Ikram whose dynamic owner, 41-year-old Ikram Goldman has, according to the New York Times, “served as a gatekeeper between the fashion industry and the first lady”.

Obama, a loyal client, has shopped at Ikram for years and most of the labels she wears are stocked by this boutique. Mrs Goldman, who oversaw the wardrobe for the inauguration and kept designers in the dark about the choices of outfits, remains publicity shy and does not give interviews.

Obama’s political skills and intelligence have enabled her to use clothes adroitly to her advantage. Last October on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, for example, she revealed that her three-piece outfit – yellow skirt, top and cardigan – were inexpensive items from J Crew online. Coming at a time when Republican vice presidential contender Sarah Palin was being pilloried for spending $150,000 (€116,000) on her campaign wardrobe, it was game, set and match to Obama.

As New York Fashion Week kicked off this week, every designer wanted Obama’s presence, that shining halo of endorsement, but instead the US first lady, dressing as always with her usual panache, was attending events at Howard University and the reopening of Ford’s theatre in New York. She may be the nation’s first lady of fashion, but it’s clear where her priorities lie.