Dressing up

BABY BOOMER PINUP GIRL? | Fashion industry banks on Michelle

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.

They see her as a real woman with a real body who can inspire fashionable apparel aimed at middle-age 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 "Michelle dress," a $598 purple-floral sheath.

The online version of Women's Wear Daily presented dozens of sketches of gowns the first lady 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 Obama will be wearing to the balls or to the inauguration, although the betting is she'll pick an American designer.

Michelle Obama already has 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 favorite Chicago designer, Maria Pinto, or a black-and-white off-the-rack print sheath. She could bring back the sleeveless look again. And she favors dresses -- no pantsuits.

"Ever since she began getting criticized because she seemed 'too strong,' Michelle has made the Dress her uniform," longtime fashion watcher Bonnie Fuller wrote on huffingtonpost.com. "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 magazines are competing to be first to get her on their covers, hoping she'll help rescue the magazine industry in the same way Princess Diana did during a previous down period.

The paradox 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," said Mandi Norwood, a longtime fashion editor who's working on a book celebrating her fashion sense, Michelle Obama Style Guide. "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 on election night was panned by many; a USA Today online poll found that 65 percent of more than 10,000 readers thought she "had an off day," fashion-wise.

"There's a real longing for rediscovering good taste and chic dressing, and Jackie Kennedy was the start of that," Norwood said. "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."

Gannett News Service