How Michelle Obama Remains In Full Control Of Building Her Image

New York Times:

Vogue magazine, the fashion world's chronicler of first ladies, bedecked Hillary Rodham Clinton in black velvet and Laura Bush in blue silk. But not Michelle Obama. She insisted on choosing her own dress (a sleeveless, magenta silk number) and using her own hair and makeup stylists for the glossy photograph splashed across Vogue's March cover.

This was nothing new for Mrs. Obama, who has pointedly controlled her look on the covers of People, Essence, More and O, Oprah Winfrey's magazine.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[ElsaIndy]

The impression that I have is that the press actually likes MO. I know the right wing press may not but generally she has had good press. All First Ladies get criticized. Poor Mrs. Clinton could not get anything right with her hair or her clothes. She was a pretty good sport about it. Mrs. Carter also was ridiculed for wearing her old clothes and being so frugal. Which was really somewhat unfair. So the criticism of MO on her clothes is not new for a First Lady. People have every right to criticize her clothing especially since she has made such a point of being a fashion icon by doing her endless interviews for fashion magazines. Many of her choices do not fit her well, do not flatter her and are inappropriate. Many of us who like her as First Lady but cannot understand why she insists on dressing so badly and in such poor taste when she has access to a whole world of people who would love to help her. To be criticized as racist because we participate in this debate instead of fawning is unfair.

[ElsaIndy]

I get the impression from this article that MO is a control freak which may be why she refuses to get fashion help which she badly needs. Earlier reports by her mother and friends on her obsessive control over her children's food, evidently one daughter was getting fat and they had to cut back on her intake, and their schedules and even one daughter's footwork in her basketball games has been confirmed by this article. Her mother said she thought MO was excessively strict. That MO does not trust a stylist when she repeatedly fails to make appropriate choices at key events may be due to her interpretation of criticism as racist or simply that she is such a control freak.

[MsIrisMG]

Good for her! She knows what she likes, and in the words of the late Ray Charles, "doesn't give a damn who likes it". Exactly the way I'd be if I were in her shoes. I'm glad she's making her own rules and setting her own standard. She and her mom need no help.

Now, Condoleezza, on the other hand, oh dear..

[duze]

I thought someone by the name of Ikram Goldman was her stylist. If so, she should be fired. Far too many of Michelle's outfits are aged and the last thing she needs is to look like she's wearing one of "I Love Lucy's" dresses. By the way, no matter if someone else picks her clothes or she does, she needs to get a $1.39 can of holding spray so her hair isn't always out of place at the top of her head. Shouldn't take a stylist to tell her that.

[Char59]

She can wear anything she wants and if she wants her hair out of place that is her business. That is what is wrong with everyone, always trying to tell someone else what to wear and do their hair. Who tells you how to look?

[barackobama4prez]

Good for her.

[Epiphany2b]

Seems to me that someone is pretty shallow if they're so busy critiquing what wraps the package that they can't appreciate the gift within.

I don't quite get the concept of "mistakes" as applied to fashion. What I would call a mistake is to wear a fur coat on a 90 degree day, or shorts and a tank top to go skiing in. Perhaps wearing 1970s bell-bottom pants, or a 1950ish poodle skirt . . . or a polyester zutsuit. Anything else seems pretty much a difference of opinion as to what is fashionable. You fashion mavens think you're pretty "hip", I guess, but can come across as very snooty and shallow.

[NCYvonne]

Political Amazon says: "Personal attacks are a sign of a weak poster"

Eureka! That explains her relentless personal attacks on Michelle Obama!

[Aesthete]

No stylist can really help much if a woman is not first comfortable in her own skin. Mrs. Obama is comfortable as herself plus the fact that she has more important things to be concerned about and passionate about.

[Pie7]

Agreed!

[PoliticalAmazon]

Well, she may be in charge of building her image, but that also makes her responsible for mistakes.

I liked it better when I thought someone was actually giving her fashion/style advice. To learn that she is the one responsible for the embarrassing outfits she wears--dis­appointing­.

[luvangelHussein330]

so your mad at her for the ability to think for herself and have her own taste? To each his or her own. At some point your going to have to get over your bitterness toward her style. Just because you and other don't like it means nada obviously to her...so why hold onto the negativity? Let it go. First Lady Michelle will contiue to do her...and if there is something you don't like don't where it...do you. It's unhealthy that in style post after post all you can find to do is be negative 100's of comments much the same...
you have a very intresting life...

[mirandawilde]

She is gorgeous!

[kats]

Michelle has the right idea...she can get advice but ultimately she's the one wearing the clothes and she's the one who get's the kudos or the criticism. She looks good most of the time and she will learn what doesn't look good on her in no time at all.

[BoboPalinski]

She's doing everything she can to make me like her.

[MideastDove]

Love this woman!
Great example.

[ChaiKat]

I've seen the looks some of these "stylists" create and some are downright scary! She's right in just wearing what she wants. She knows what looks good on her and what doesn't.

[PoliticalAmazon]

IF you're talking about Zoe whateverhernameis, who turns all of her female clients into anorexic skeletons, ITA.

But I believe MO would be greatly benefitted by consulting a good stylist. MO's choices have been embarassing to pitiful, and it seems to have started afterObama was elected. Before that, during the campaign, she looked like a FLOTUS, but a "va-va-va-VOOOM!" FLOTUS.

Now---well, the image of Minnie Pearl comes to mind.

[NCYvonne]

The "Minnie Pearl" theme is old by now. Come up with some new material.

And please get over your crush on Michelle. You're not her type. She prefers humans!

[2morrowKnight]

This is why Michelle Obama has such broad appeal. What she is doing is what she's always done, and its very refreshing that she has not changed.

I remember HUFFPO blogger Peggy Drexler agued in two blogposts recently that Michelle's image is basically packaging. I take issue with this assumption because anyone who has done research on this woman, as HUFFPO blogger Diane Felsenthal has done, knows that despite the high-powered salary she had in Chicago, she remeained a genuinely down the earth person. In fact, Felsenthal did a riveting piece on Michelle Obama for Chicago Magazine that everyone should read. Here is the link: http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/February-2009/The-Making-of-a-First-Lady/

What we are seeing from the First Lady is not packaging, but a reflection of the person she's always been: involved parent; good coporate citizen; substative thinker; and action-oriented visionary.

I love it. And I love our wonderful and beautiful and accomplished First Lady.