Michelle Obama's high fashion in hard times
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
February 27, 2009
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| File Photo: First Lady Michelle Obama appears on the March 2009 cover of Vogue Magazine. Obama is the second wife of a sitting president to appear in a cover story. Hillary Clinton was the first in 1998. |
So what was the White House social secretary doing at the New York fashion shows?
It didn't make most of the papers or the TV newscasts, but Desiree Rogers, the new White House social secretary, caused a bit of a stir recently when she appeared at New York's Fashion Week shows, sitting next to Vogue Editor Anna Wintour as she took in the latest from designers Carolina Herrera and Donna Karan.
"The fashions were amazing," Rogers told Women's Wear Daily. "I particularly liked the dresses for daytime that were a classic silhouette. ..." Besides Herrera and Karan, Rogers also attended a show by Marc Jacobs where, according to the New York Daily News, "fashion's baddest boy paraded punky, funky ponchos and razor-sharp shouldered jackets in Day-Glo metallics."
At first, it wasn't clear whether Rogers was hanging with the fashionistas as part of her official White House duties or not. Then New York magazine quoted a White House aide saying, "Desiree was in New York on a fact-finding mission. She's acting as a cultural liaison for the White House; she's researching fashion and music."
I called the White House to check if that quote was accurate. It was. An aide explained that first lady Michelle Obama "has taken a particular interest in showcasing the work of young up-and-coming designers who have chosen fashion as their path and who are artists in their own right and who are introduced at places like Fashion Week."
It's hard to put Herrera, Karan and Jacobs in the up-and-coming category, but never mind: Perhaps we'll be seeing punky, funky ponchos and Day-Glo metallics at some future White House function. I asked whether the first lady considered Rogers' hitting the fashion shows a little frivolous, given the seriousness of our times. "I think you're assigning a value judgment to the fashion industry," I was told. "She doesn't think it is frivolous at all."
I talked to two former White House social secretaries, one Democrat and one Republican. "I don't really understand where fashion ties in with the social secretary's job," the Republican told me, "because the only fashion she needs to worry about is her own, and she has to make sure she does not eclipse the first lady.
On the other hand, the Democrat said, the fashion industry is a real industry, "a major business, and a major export business, for the United States." The first family, she continued, can "set a certain sense of style for fashion, food and wine — you try to spotlight all things that are wonderfully American and represent some of America's best industries."
The Obama White House stressed to me that Rogers did much more in New York than attend fashion shows. She had a full schedule — the aide wouldn't say exactly what it was — looking for new artists, musicians and other cultural figures who might take part in White House events.
Rogers was also treated to lunch at the chic Four Seasons by the interior decorator Michael Smith. You might have heard Smith's name because he was the man chosen by the now-departed Merrill Lynch Chief Executive Officer John Thain to handle Thain’s notorious $1.2 million office redecoration project. President Barack Obama condemned that sort of excess, but then hired none other than Michael Smith to spruce up the White House. And then Smith honored Rogers at the Four Seasons.
What makes all of this noteworthy, of course, is that it is taking place against the backdrop of widespread economic misery. As millions of Americans worry about losing their jobs, the first lady is celebrated on the cover of Wintour’s magazine, Vogue, where it is suggested that her "ardent championing of new names in American design" has caused some to call her the "new Jackie Kennedy."
Why not Nancy Reagan? Mrs. Reagan's husband also took office amid an inherited economic crisis, and she quickly became the subject of sometimes bitter criticism for her fondness for high fashion — for "exercising her opulent tastes in an economy that is inflicting hardship on so many," in the words of a 1981 New York Times article.
Now, in this economy that is inflicting hardship on so many, the first lady is celebrated for her new vision of haute couture, while her social secretary socializes with the most glamorous names in the world of fashion. Change has indeed come to Washington.
Byron York, The Examiner’s chief political correspondent, can be contacted at byork@dcexaminer.com. His columns appear Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blogs are posted on ExaminerPolitics.com.
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