So this week Americans go to the polls to select their new president. Standing in the booths, punching their ballots, they will consider the economy, they will consider policies, and they will consider – clothes.
Clothes? Despite the assertion by the McCain-Palin campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt that “with all the important issues facing the country, it’s remarkable we’re talking about pantsuits and blouses” (in reference to the news that the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 on Governor Palin’s wardrobe) the truth is, in politics as in everything, we have a lot to say about clothing because our clothing has a lot to say about us.
And nowhere has this been more obvious than in the case of the two other highest-profile women in the US presidential election, Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama. Almost without exception, their style choices offer a clear commentary on where their respective husbands and parties stand. To examine the prospective first ladies’ wardrobes is thus not to ignore “the important issues” in America today; it is, on the contrary, to confront the vast differences between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama – differences in values and vision that define this campaign and will determine its winner.
Of the two women’s fashion statements, Cindy McCain’s are probably the easiest to decode, as they visibly embody four basic Republican principles. The first – consistent with her husband’s Bush-aligned voting record – is Continuity. Mrs McCain, like Laura Bush, favours Oscar de la Renta, who has long been the designated White House couturier, and who dressed both ladies for the opening night of the Republican National Convention. Like her other campaign-trail ensembles, the gold shirtwaist Cindy McCain donned for that occasion reflected the formula Nancy Reagan developed in the 1980s. Brightly coloured and unfailingly feminine, McCain’s frocks and suits project an image of soignée, conservative womanhood. (This look couldn’t, significantly, be farther from the aggressive, pant-suited feminism of one-time Democratic presidential hopeful, Senator Hillary Clinton.) Thus attired, the former Arizona rodeo queen is rebranded as the perfect Republican helpmate: Nancy 2.0.
But this kind of makeover requires a major cash outlay, which brings us to Republican principle number two: Big Money. Vanity Fair estimated the cost of McCain’s RNC ensemble at $300,000, including $280,000 diamond studs. Clearly, nothing says “let them eat cake” like some very expensive earrings – unless it’s your husband proclaiming, in the midst of a nationwide financial meltdown, that America’s economy is “still strong”.
Cindy McCain doesn’t, however, need real jewels to make a point. By sporting rhinestone brooches that spell out NAVY and USMC (her son Jack is at the Navy Academy, her son Jimmy in the Marines), she broadcasts Republican principles three and four: Family Values and Support Our Troops. Hammered home in her RNC speech, these themes received further support from her hair colour, which one newspaper described as “picket-fence white”.
By contrast, as an African-American, Michelle Obama has a complex relationship to “whiteness,” particularly since this summer when a controversial New Yorker cover depicted her as a Black Panther, complete with Afro, fatigues, and machine gun. Obama has responded by modelling herself on a far less frightening 1960s figure: Jacqueline Kennedy. In recent months, she has restyled her hair in a “Jackie flip,” worn piles of costume jewellery and adopted a uniform of fitted sheath dresses and flats. Theoretically, comparisons to one of America’s best-loved first ladies should help defuse fears of her alleged militant “blackness”. Further, her evocation of what Vogue’s André Leon Talley has called “a black Camelot moment” echoes Senator Obama’s stirring paeans to change.
Michelle Obama’s clothes spell change in other ways, too. Parting company with past presidential wives, she has replaced Oscar de la Renta with relatively young, unknown American designers: Maria Pinto, Thakoon Panichgul, Isabel Toledo, Narciso Rodriguez. More importantly, by patronising these designers, Obama is supporting US small business and – to borrow her husband’s well-documented phrase – “spreading the wealth around”.
By the same token, these designers’ clothes do not come cheap. And because their off-the-rack creations, available in sizes no larger than a European size 46, may not fit Obama’s full-hipped, 5ft 11in frame, her campaign apparel is probably couture. In this respect, the charges of elitism that have dogged Senator Obama also apply to his wife. Yet perhaps for this very reason, Michelle Obama – who, like her husband, has emphasised her working-class background – has also cultivated a reputation for low-cost, accessible chic. People magazine ran a photo of her in a $50 choker from Carolee; on the US talk-show The View, she unveiled a $148 sheath dress from the appropriately named label White House/Black Market. Thus Obama practices the egalitarianism that her husband likes to preach.
On both sides, then, it would seem that you can judge a book by its cover – or a candidate’s substance by his wife’s style. This conclusion may, and indeed should, make hackles rise for the decorative role it assigns to political wives. But on the campaign trail and in the White House alike, that is exactly the role that they are required to play; they submit to an endless round of public appearances and photo-ops, all to give the public some presumed extra insight into the Man-Who-Would-Be-President. Within these parameters, to reflect and reinforce the candidate’s platform may be his wife’s biggest job; one that Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain have done with panache. Both women are ready to serve their country – as Clotheshorse-in-Chief.
Caroline Weber is associate professor of French literature at Barnard College, Columbia University, and author of ‘Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution’ (Henry Holt)
