No one is more excited about the prospect of Michelle Obama as first lady than the fashion tribe, which hasn’t stopped gushing about her since she displayed her striking style sensibility at the Democratic convention.
She is the one they have been waiting for, to borrow an Obama phrase: a real woman with a real body who can inspire fashionable apparel aimed at middle-aged women overlooked by a youth-obsessed industry.
“Designers and executives are holding up Mrs. Obama as their Baby Boomer pinup girl,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
Retailers such as Talbots, J.Crew, Liz Claiborne and Saks Fifth Avenue are invoking the incoming first lady as muse to help sell frocks such as designer Elie Tahari’s $598 purple-floral sheath “Michelle dress.”
“The American fashion industry hasn’t had a catch this big since, well, since another icon of Democratic chic took up residency on Pennsylvania Avenue in 1961,” trilled WWD, referring to Jacqueline Kennedy.
The online version of Women’s Wear Daily helpfully presented dozens of sketches of gowns Michelle and her two young daughters, Malia and Sasha, could wear to the inaugural balls, solicited from some of the most admired designers in fashion.
So far, no word on what or who Michelle will be wearing to the balls or to the Inauguration, although the betting is she’ll pick an American designer. (He husband is wearing a tuxedo by Hart Schaffner Marx to the balls, according to WWD.)
But Michelle already has shown a distinct look: bold color is the new black for her — tomato red, peacock turquoise, shimmery violet, lemony yellow. She looks as good in a no-name white shirt, cropped pants and flats as she does in a dress by her Chicago designer favorite, Maria Pinto, or a black-and-white print sheath off-the-rack. She could bring back the sleeveless look again, maybe even to uptight Washington. And she favors dresses — no pantsuits.
“Ever since she began getting criticized because she seemed ’too strong,’ Michelle has made the Dress her uniform,” blogged longtime fashion watcher Bonnie Fuller on Huffington Post.
“There’s something about a woman in a suit that American men and women still find intimidating. A suit strikes them as too cold, too impersonal, and too ambitious.”
All the big fashion books are competing to be first to get her to pose for their covers, hoping she’ll help rescue the magazine industry in the same way Princess Diana did during a previous down period.
“It’s absolutely ferocious out there,” says Mandi Norwood, a longtime fashion editor who’s working on a celebratory book, “Michelle Obama Style Guide.”
“Take a ticket and get in line if you want her on your cover. For the next four years, if you can get her, then it’s only good news for circulation.”
Norwood says the fashion industry has been waiting for a style-savvy first lady for years.
“(Laura) Bush is very elegant and refined, but she was very conservative in her dress, and very few of us could relate it to us,” Norwood says. “Hillary Clinton never quite got it right in the style department; she caused many chuckles from style observers, which is just not good.”
The paradox, of course, is that Michelle Obama does not have the usual silhouette of a fashion model: She’s tall and fit but also curvy, not stick-thin, boyish or fragile.
“First ladies tend to be unfairly judged by what they wear, so appearance is almost as important as what she says,” Norwood says. “She has her own style, but it’s not contrived, it feels incredibly natural. That’s why she has been so universally accepted as a fashion icon.”
Of course, everyone makes mistakes. The red-and-black Narciso Rodriguez dress she wore in Chicago’s Grant Park on election night was panned by many; a USA TODAY online poll found that 65% of more than 10,000 readers thought she “had an off day,” fashion-wise.
But that may have been partly because of the weather. (She wore a cardigan over the dress because of the cold.)
“There’s a real longing for rediscovering good taste and chic dressing, and Jackie Kennedy was the start of that,” Norwood says.
“Mrs. Obama has taken that style we admire and given it a lovely playful twist that’s not so aristocratic and is much more relatable.
“Fashion has been craving that kind of elegance for a long time.”
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July 9, 2009 
Never in human history has men’s footwear been revolutionized by a single act that lasted only about 
President-Elect Barack Obama isn’t the only one who has green on the brain.
