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.
And her clothes had to be ready for that. There was too much else to do, including raising daughters Sasha and Malia, and she said she didn’t have time to obsess over what she was wearing.
“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 back to growing up on the South Side of Chicago to when she found herself in the national spotlight as the first Black woman to serve in the role. “I was the kind of first lady that there was no telling what I would do.”
Obama would become one of the most-watched women in the world, for what she said and did, but also for what she wore. She chronicled her fashion, hair and makeup journey in her newest book, “The Look,” written with her longtime stylist Meredith Koop and published earlier this month.
As first lady, she was well-known for her athleticism and caught a football from an NFL player, played soccer with David Beckham, broke a Guinness World Record for jumping jacks and did pushups with Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.
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 wouldn’t 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.
Here’s what she said about a few of her notable fashion choices:
Her gown for Obama’s first inauguration
The white, one-shoulder chiffon gown was designed by Jason Wu, then an unknown 26-year-old who was born in Taiwan. But when she stepped out at the inaugural ball wearing the gown, the moment changed Wu’s life. And that was by design, she said.
“We were beginning to realize everything we did sent a message,” Obama said, speaking of herself and her husband, former President Barack Obama. “So that’s what we were trying to do with the choices we made, to change lives.”
She would continue to help launch the careers of other up-and-coming designers by wearing their creations.
Chain mail state dinner gown
Obama wore the rose gold gown by Versace for the Obama administration’s final state dinner, for Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in October 2016.
“So that was a kind of a, ‘I don’t care’ dress,” she said of the shimmery, one-armed gown.
“I put that on. I was like, ‘This is sexy.’ It’s the last one,” she said, meaning their final state dinner. “All of my choices, ultimately, are what is beautiful — and what looks beautiful on.”
Pantsuit worn to Joe Biden’s inauguration
“I was really in practical mode,” Obama said, explaining why she chose the maroon ensemble by Sergio Hudson with a flowing, floor-length coat that she wore unbuttoned, exposing the belt around her waist with a big, round gold-toned buckle. Her boots had a low heel.
“The sitting president was trying to convince us that Jan. 6 was just a peaceful protest,” she said.
The inauguration ceremony at the Capitol was held two weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot there by supporters of President Donald Trump who had sought to overturn Biden’s victory.
She said she had been thinking about the possibility of having to run if something else had happened that day.
“I wanted to be able to move. I wanted to be ready,” she said. But she and her team “had no idea” the outfit “was going to break the internet,” she said.
White House East Wing
Obama also spoke about the East Wing, the traditional base of operations for first ladies that Trump last month tore down to make room for a ballroom he’s long desired.
Obama described the East Wing as a joyful place that she remembers as full of apples, children, puppies and laughter, in contrast to the West Wing, which dealt with “horrible things.” It was where she worked on various initiatives that ranged from combating childhood obesity to rallying the country around military families to encouraging developing countries to let girls go to school.
She said she and her husband never thought of the White House as “our house.” They saw themselves more as caretakers, and there was work to do in the mansion.
“But every president has the right to do what they want in that house, so that’s why we’ve got to be clear on who we let in,” Obama said.
