What Michelle Obama said about her iconic fashion picks, chronicled in The Look
Michelle Obama – who shares daughters Sasha and Malia with Barack Obama – is known for her bold fashion choices, from Jason Wu to Versace
On any day during her eight years as first lady of the United States, Michelle Obama said she could go from giving a speech to meeting with a counterpart from another country to digging in her vegetable garden with groups of schoolchildren.
“I was concerned about, ‘Can I hug somebody in it? Will it get dirty?’” she said Wednesday night during a moderated conversation about her style choices dating to growing up on the South Side of Chicago to when she found herself in the national spotlight as the first Black woman to be first lady. “I was the kind of first lady that there was no telling what I would do.”
She wanted her clothes to be welcoming as well as versatile.
“The thing about clothes that I find is that they can welcome people in or they can keep people away, and if you’re so put together and so precious and things are so crisp and the pin is so big, you know, it can just tell people, ‘Don’t touch me,’” she said.
She said she would not wear white to events with rope lines in case someone wanted a hug.
“I’m not going to push somebody away when they need something from me, and I’m not going to let the clothes get in the way of that,” Obama said.