Throughout the fall, Michelle Obama embarked on a fashion-heavy press tour for her newest book, The Look. Working with stylist (and co-author) Meredith Koop, she graced the stage with Tracee Ellis Ross in straight-off-the-runway Loewe, guest-starred on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert in pearl-embellished Simone Rocha, and sat down with Jimmy Kimmel in a blue Hervé Léger bandage dress that called back to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Elsewhere, the former first lady wore vintage Zac Posen, several looks from Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel, and a bit of Prada and Thom Browne. But the goal was never to get you talking only about her style.
The Look, out last November, examined the role that fashion played in Obama’s life before, during, and after her time in the White House. In the pages, she opened up about the public scrutiny she faced for what she wore or how she styled her hair, the political nuances behind each look, and how she has come to reclaim the narrative. In a candid chat with Call Her Daddy’s Alex Cooper, she discussed it all.
“In those first months of being in office, you see what’s written,” Obama recalled, looking back at her early days on the job—as the first lady to her husband, 44th U.S. President Barack Obama—when she quickly realized her appearance was the focus of the conversation.
There was even a website, Mrs. O, that tracked her style. She noted, “This was complimentary, it was exciting, I could see the fun in it. But I understood that fashion and appearance for women is so powerful that if I spent too much time talking about it, maybe nobody would hear anything else that I had to say. And I came in wanting to say so much and do so much.”
“There wasn’t comment about the substance of what I was saying. It was, ‘Why did she wear this? Was that appropriate? What does this mean?’ It’s all about how we look. And the more you pay attention to that, you see it not just happen to me, but it even happened to other female candidates, other wives, other celebrities, other people in the public eye,” Obama said.
“So I tried not to take it personally and understand that this was a game. And I definitely didn’t want to assume that this is what America thought,” Obama continued, noting the disconnect between the public discourse online and the meaningful conversations she was having with everyday Americans, in which she consistently felt welcomed and heard.
“Being able to separate out what is politics and media and where people’s hearts are… I didn’t want that to color my heart toward this country.”
That said, Obama does have fun with fashion, and for the podcast, she and Koop layered a red vest over a button-down shirt, crafting a “Campus Look 2.0,” that nodded to an iconic photo from Obama’s time at Princeton and spoke to the Becoming author’s impressive career and academic history.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.harpersbazaar.com ’
