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I was going through photos of the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting trying to find how many female leaders there are, and if their spouses came with them (I'll be posting on this soon), and came across another Michelle Obama fashion statement.
In the above photo, she is at the APEC leaders dinner in Honolulu in November 2011 with President Obama, and Australian PM Julia Gillard and her "partner" Tim Mathieson.
These days, any dress that is worn by a movie star or a high level political personality catches my attention, especially if it is slap-dash and toga-like with clearly inferior craftsmanship, when I assume that the Hollywood bound Vera Wang is the lucky designer. This "Honolulu" dress has Wang's print all over it.
Wang writes at her blog on Michelle Obama's most recent sartorial decision:
What an honor and privilege to have dressed our beloved First Lady, Michelle Obama! XxVeraThe dress she mentions is the "Honolulu" dress. So I was right.
I won't go into too much detail, Wang's dress doesn't warrant much attention, but: there's that odd (signature) off-the shoulder-to-show-all-those-hard-earned-gym-muscles look, although this time with an angled twist; there's an attempt to give Michelle a waist-line, another signature Michelle cut; although the material is silk, it is crinkled and tired looking; there's the t-shirt type (although probably silk and not cotton) undergarment; the cheap-looking silver bangles; and finally, something around the neck would have softened Michelle's aggressively muscular neckline.
Wang looks like she's trying too hard to dress her beloved First Lady. Or, I might just be giving her too much credit, and this is the best she could possibly do, trying or not trying. She looks like the perfect designer for Michelle.
I've written before that for some reason Vera Wang has become the designer du jour for the upper classes, and I think it is mostly because of her clever marketing and production techniques, one of which is that she's all over the place.
It is interesting that this the fourth outfit that Michelle Obama wore in the past two years designed by an Asian. The other three are by:
- Doo-Ri Chung (Gown for the White House State Dinner for Korea's President, 2011)
- Prabal Gugrung (Dress wore at the Smithsonian, handing over her Jason Wu inaugural gown to the First Lady's gowns collection, 2010)
-Derek Lam (State dinner, Indonesia 2010)
- Jason Wu (Inaugural ball gown, 2009)
I've written on Michelle's search for non-white "ethnic" designers (I presume to promote the non-whiteness of the White House) and Vera Wang has cleverly positioned herself to fill that slot.