Michelle Obama's fashion choices have not just been erratic over the last couple of years, they've been downright inappropriate at times. But for the White House Christmas party, she pulled it all together with aplomb!
Michelle Obama in a vintageNorman Norell cocktail dress...clasy, figure flattering, and first lady like. (Has someone on her staff been reading BHB or Wendy B or Zuburbia or Couture Allure?) Instead of the giant diamond earrings, I would have styled her with smaller vintage diamond earrings and a classic vintage diamond brooch as well, such as the one that I sent to Julia Roberts to wear at the White House a couple of weeks ago, but overall, Mrs. Obama gets the BHB seal of approval for this look.
Michelle Obama has been lauded for her fashion choices. Among the reasons for this admiration is accessibility. Many of her clothing choices have been at price points that are not beyond the reach of most. The new First Lady looked stunning in her selections from emerging designers Isabel Toledo (for the swearing-in ceremony) and Jason Wu (for the inaugural galas).
About a year ago I was in Spain and France on my vacation. Since that time 12 months ago, I haven't taken any time off from my job for a holiday. Fortunately, I will be taking a short, yet much needed, 6 day vacation at the end of August.
Now can we talk about our First Lady and her vacation in Spain. Don't get me wrong, she has a demanding job and I don't begrudge her taking time off with her friends and family. What I do mind is that by the end of the summer, not only will she have taken 8 vacations, and the cost of taking her entourage, including her security detail and personal staff, some 50 people, to Marbella, will have been a couple of hundred thousand dollars...at least.
Couldn't that money have been spent in the United States? Big Sur, Santa Barbara, Malibu, Monarch Beach, La Jolla... these are just a few gorgeous locations in California where she could have taken some time off with her girls and her gal pals.
If she required a beautiful beach what about Hawaii or Hilton Head?
In a period of gazillions in US debt, and 22% real unemployment, this is what writer Roger Simon had to say about it
Michelle’s $375,000 Spanish vacation — with the Daily Mail dubbing her a “modern-day Marie Antoinette” — is further proof of my thesis. What man who wanted to be re-elected (or see his party do well in November) would let his wife go off on such an “excellent adventure” in these economic times? Of course no one denies the right of people to have vacations – I’m coming to the end of one myself on my beloved Bainbridge Island — but closing Mediterranean beaches while booking 60-plus rooms in a five star Marbella hotel for her entourage? It is beyond tone deaf, perhaps to the level of subconscious (or even deliberate) self-sabotage.
At the very least, something most peculiar is going on. The first lady goes off on a jaunt worthy of 18th Century aristocracy at the very moment of her husband’s birthday. Is somebody trying to tell us something?
It seems to be a strange political decision from the Obamas who are so politically savvy.
God knows she can get it really right as she did with the one shouldered white gown that she wore to the inaugural ball.
But she can also get it really, really wrong.
This woman has hundreds of gowns to choose from...not to mention the benefit of bespoke from the top designers in this county, and she decides to wear this gown to a state dinner????
The color may be becoming but the fit and the fabric are terrible.
We don't know, kittens. We go back and forth on this Peter Soronen dress. In the Silhouette Sweepstakes (which she often loses) this is a winner for her. She looks tall and elegant. The color is beautiful. The problem is that it's so shinyshiny that it looks, well, a little cheap. In fact, it looks a bit like a Project Runway entry. "Designers, you must design a dress for the First Lady to wear to dinner. You have 15 dollars and 3 hours to complete it. Carry on!"As for the hair, well we go back and forth on that one too. Perhaps we need more coffee to be the opinionated bitches you all love. On the one hand, changing up her sleek bob for a little curl sounds like a good idea in theory. On the other hand, all she needs is a little dog and the sheet music to "The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow" and she's good to go.
From National Jeweler True to her style-icon status, Michelle Obama stepped out in a red, off-the-shoulder gown by Prabal Gurang paired with an assemblage of eye-catching jewelry, including stacked cuff bracelets and long drop earrings. Together the pieces featured an artful mix of textures and materials, including yellow gold, white bakelite, diamonds and gemstones.Sitting atop the first lady's wrist was a hand-hammered cuff in 18-karat yellow gold from Sutra Jewels highlighted at the center by a 10-carat raspberry tourmaline and flanked by rose-cut diamonds in a star-burst motif. Stacked right above--in the way fashion designers have been styling cuffs on the runway--was Bochic's whitebakelite cuff featuring gold filigree and diamond inlay.Also from Bochic, the first lady donned a tourmaline and rose-cut diamond ring, plus carved tourmaline earrings inset with white bakelite and rose-cut diamonds.
Am I the only one to go out on a limb her and say that I would have expected the First Lady to have worn real jewelry and not bakelite nonsense to the the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner. It's not as though the jewelry isn't on loan to her through her stylists.
I would love to know whether Bochic or Sutra jewelry are even manufactured in the US?
So when Ms. Pinto abruptly put up a “closeout sale” sign in the window of her West Loop boutique and announced that she was folding her fashion business, Chicago — and Pinto devotees all over — reacted with disbelief: What in sartorial heaven happened? “I pushed as far as I could,” Ms. Pinto, 53, said in her first lengthy interview since the demise of her store and wholesale operations in mid-February. Just back from a month’s break in Barcelona, she pointed to the strain that a sour economy had placed on her business just as it was expanding and gaining major traction beyond a loyal Chicago following.
But Ms. Pinto acknowledged having made some typical startup mistakes in building her brand, in areas like financial management and operations.
After 16 years of designing out of a somewhat anonymous atelier, she opened the boutique, named after herself, in August 2008, capitalizing on a wave of enthusiasm for her work, as displayed mostly by Mrs. Obama on the campaign trail. She also increased her wholesale operations and had been maintaining a showroom in New York.
While Mrs. Obama diversified her style after becoming first lady (she has been drawn to high-end designers like Jason Wu and Narciso Rodriguez, as well as brands like J. Crew), she still sported Maria Pinto every now and then. But even high-profile support of the brand, priced in the hundreds and thousands of dollars, could not save it from the reality of the Great Recession.
Personally, I think that Maria Pinto designed some amazing dresses for Michelle Obama. The monochromatic jewel colored look worked brilliantly for Mrs Obama in the way that the Dior purple worked for Carla Bruni Sarkozy. I much preferred Pinto's designs to those mix and match outfits that were so un-First Lady like.
The real problems started right after the introduction of the spring 2010 line in New York last September, Ms. Pinto said. “They loved the line,” she said. “I was like, where are the orders? O.K., this is not a good sign.” Pinto was carried at stores like Barneys, Saks Fifth Avenue and Takashimaya — a store whose New York location will soon be closing its doors, another victim of the recession.
There are many economic ironies in this tale but I will leave them to the side. Hopefully Maria Pinto will find a partner who can handle the business side of things while she can concentrate on her designs.
