Michelle Obama heralds a different change

Washington: Move over Jackie O, here comes Michelle O: a new style icon for the new political era dawning in America. One certainty of a Barack presidency is that the First Lady will cut her own swathe in fashion.

"There's nothing wrong with wanting to look pretty," Michelle Obama has said and she has taken her advice literally with a string of well-cut shift dresses for key events, the most outstanding being Carla Bruni-esque deep lilac with an Alaia belt and a bright turquoise version from her favourite Chicago-based designer Maria Pinto.

There is an obvious reverence for the tradition of Mrs Kennedy here, in neat fitted jackets worn over luminous figure-hugging dresses: but without the attendant sense of super-high spending.

After she was briefly outshone by Sarah Palin, whose $150,000 (Dh551,151) wardrobe looked good but cost her dear in terms of her claim to represent "ordinary" America, all eyes are now back on the woman most likely to move her wardrobe into the White House.

Not for her the Hillary Clinton hyper-groomed look of the sisterhood of the travelling pants suit - she is rarely seen in trousers, other than wide Calvin Klein palazzo pants for evening wear, with a tunic by Isabel Toledo. That brought a chorus of approval from US fashion editors who admired her judicious eye for a less well-known designer. There is politics at play, too. Toledo is a proud Latina and Obama needs ethnic minority votes.

Fashion has cast its vote. Palin's heroic attempts notwithstanding, Anna Wintour gave a fundraiser for the Obama campaign last week attended by big name designers, and Diane Von Furstenberg is a vocal supporter of the Obamas.

Michelle Obama's is a prosperous working-women's style, a mile away from the cautious Ralph Lauren uniform of Laura Bush or Hillary Clinton's forays into technicolour mustard and royal blue. You might actually want to wear something that Michelle owns.