In a recent interview, fashion doyenne Donatella Versace identified Barack Obama as the inspiration for her spring 2009 men’s collection, describing his style as that of “a relaxed man who doesn’t need to flex muscles to show he has power.” Perhaps better than anyone, the Obamas have mastered the high-low aesthetic. Michelle Obama, it is well-established, looks equally at home in a Narciso Rodriguez gown and a J. Crew dress. The President shops at Burberry, but insists he wears the same suits repeatedly, even to the point of patching them up. Indeed, despite the GQ covers, Obama is not so stylish that designer Tom Ford can’t see room for improvement. “I think he’s a great-looking guy,” Ford told British Vogue, “but I think his suits don’t fit him very well.” We know that each U.S. president is a living symbol of the type of America he intends to manifest. In style terms, Barack Obama is the presidential equivalent of the frugalista. He is, in New York Times “Sunday Style” parlance, populist fabulous.
Since day one, American presidents have wrestled with the question: how much pomp is too much? “When they created the American presidency in 1789,” says Harry Rubenstein of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, “they combined the duties and functions of both a monarchy and a chief executive into one office—and this has been a problem for presidents ever since.” On the one hand, America is a democracy, created as a violent rebuke of imperialist European monarchies. On the other hand, its people want a leader they can proudly showcase on the world stage—and, let’s face it, Americans love the glitz. And so the trick for each new president has been to broadcast “for the people,” without descending into “of the people” territory.
Presidents since George Washington have struggled to attain this elusive balance. Washington, personification of the revolution, refused John Adams’s idea to refer to him, and subsequent presidents, as “Your Royal Highness Sir Protector of Our Liberties,” opting instead for the much more subtle moniker, Mr. President. On the other hand, a fan of pomp and ceremony, Washington designed the “Presidential Palace,” now the White House, to mirror the grandeur of the palaces of France’s Louis XVI and England’s George III (the plans were ultimately too grand and had to be scaled back). Even with the modifications, when Thomas Jefferson, with his more understated style, came into office in 1801, he remarked the White House was “big enough for two emperors, one pope, and the grand lama.”
The idea of a glamorous first lady didn’t come about until Dolly Madison, wife of president James Madison (1809-1817), who was not only stylish—with an affinity for French culture—but also a hostess extraordinaire, and the first first lady to host her husband’s inaugural ball. “Mrs. Madison was like Mrs. Kennedy in her day,” says Patricia Mears, deputy director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. “Not just her clothing, but she knew how to entertain graciously, how to decorate. She really understood that the White House was a symbol of what America could be.”
After Madison, the idea of the first lady as an important part of presidential myth-making took hold. Others openly embraced high style. “Mrs. Lincoln was famous for her love of finery. She was considered the ultimate clothes horse of all the first ladies,” says Mears. “But I don’t think the concept of glamour and the White House really came into being until Jacqueline Kennedy.”
In 1961, it was still the early days of the TV era when John and Jackie Kennedy entered the White House. They were the youngest and most attractive first couple the office had ever seen. The three preceding first ladies—Mamie Eisenhower, Bess Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt—while beloved, had been rather dowdy, says Mears. Then Mrs. Kennedy waltzed in with her sculptural hair, pillbox hat, couture gowns, multilingualism and European refinement. “You can see why people just went, ‘Oh my God!’ ” says Mears. “It makes a stronger, unified picture when both husband and wife are equally glamorous. When there’s an affinity, a physical affinity for one another, they reflect each other’s good physical attributes, [and] it gives an even more positive message.”
What a lot of people may not realize, she points out, is that Jackie Kennedy, like her husband, was extremely media savvy. “They both understood, as the Obamas do, that technology was going to have a great deal of influence,” she says. “How you looked on television, then becoming the ultimate medium by which Americans were getting their news, was extremely important.”
But despite the Camelot myth—perpetuated both inside and outside the office—the White House was still a populist platform. The fact that the public could now scrutinize the president’s choices in unprecedented detail meant that the Kennedys learned to play down their wealth. He swapped his Saville Row suits for tailored American ones. She ordered her French couture—Givenchy, Chanel, Balenciaga—through American retailers so she could say it was acquired locally. Many of her most famous looks were attributed to the French-born American designer Oleg Cassini. “But there’s still a great deal of controversy today whether or not Oleg Cassini really designed her clothes,” says Mears.
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