How suits, skirts and pantsuits came out of the closet in the U.S. election 

Heather Mallick
CBC.ca
November 7, 2008 

There's a universal language - clothing - and it's time to deconstruct what people have been mutely declaring on the world stage. These are leçons des choses, lessons from things.

Michelle Obama's dress on Election Night was stunning, a black satin Narciso Rodriguez dress blasted with two patches of crimson spatters, with black bands criss-crossing her torso to emphasize her tiny waist.

Ugh, said a woman named Elaine commenting on NYMag.com's fashion blog. "I thought the dress drew the eye to her breasts and stomach."

It did, Elaine. That's what made it alluring. Women have breasts; both they and men are pleased that it should be so. Bellies are where babies come from. There's the result: Sasha and Malia.

Here finally was a Democratic woman on a political stage not concealing her sexuality but happy to celebrate it. She has been rightly praised for her fashion sense - and true, there are very few clothes that don't flatter a tall, athletic woman like Michelle - but what's startling is that her clothes reflect her self-confidence in her femininity. She is a high-earning, Harvard-trained lawyer and she doesn't have to tone herself down for anyone.

Fashion statements

You may think you're reading mere fashion chat here, but I'm afraid we're deep into semiotics, the study of signs and symbols. Look, the dimple in the narrow knot of Obama's tie isn't slightly off-centre by accident. In politics, everything matters. Trust me on this.

Until the Obama campaign, femininity wasn't allowed. Look at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in loose-fitting gray pantsuits and Hillary Clinton's standard-fit pantsuits in airport seating colours from pumpkin to teal. These women were wearing body upholstery that concealed their breasts, stomachs and legs (a big shoutout to you, Elaine); in other words, clothes not suited to women's bumpy bodies. See, women rarely get elected. So many of them try to blend in with the men to see if they can pass.

Male politicians also have my sympathy. Republican politicians wear fabric boxes too, known as Brooks Brothers suits, tailored for the torso-heavy American body. Note that the comedian Stephen Colbert, who parodies Bill O'Reilly, wears Brooks Brothers because that's what a "right-wing idiot," as the real Colbert refers to his character, would wear. Colbert's full of rage. He's a shark. He's a shark in a box. He's a Damien Hirst sculpture with the sharpest comic mind in America.

The only Republicans who don't dress this way are the moneyed southern senators and representatives with silk pocket squares and fitted blazers that mean Business (I'm thinking of Representative Phil Gingrey, known as the Georgia Peach.)

But they don't get elected president.

Baggy background

The Obamas are different. They are from a younger generation accustomed to comfort. Never has a nation been as baggy as Americans from the '90s to the Noughties, so slapdash, spelling out their personalities with slogans on un-ironed T-shirts. College student style ruled the nation.

So the Obamas are going to be comfortable. But they're young, they're slim and Barack Obama especially is rail-thin, long-legged and ready for basketball. As one tall, skinny black writer - elated that his look-alike was president - said in the New York Times excitedly, "This guy is probably stuffed after a cup of minestrone!"

But Barack doesn't want to wear a Brooks box, and Michelle doesn't want to wear a chaste lady suit.

Oscar de la Renta dresses Republican women and does them a disservice … if only they knew it. Their matronly evening gowns state "I am a giant raspberry fool." Laura Bush's pantsuits are oddly tight. They declare discomfort, they are not trousers so much as sausage casings. Why can't these women wear something loose, flowing and draped? Because Oscar won't let them. He doesn't do Woman of the Desert, he does Elizabeth Dole and all the infrastructure that entails.

So what does Obama do? He wears a splendid version of a box, that is, a generously cut suit of fabric (rumours say merino wool/cashmere) so fine and beautiful that it flows and folds on his endless limbs. Tense people wear tight clothes; Obama is preternaturally relaxed and he likes to touch people when he's campaigning.

I was puzzled by John McCain's clothes, made of stiff fabrics that made him look like a man wearing a fresh brown paper bag. His collars were baggy, his shirts billowed, and his jackets didn't fit. His suits wore him rather than the other way around.

Signifying what? Perhaps McCain was trying to look like an ordinary Joe. The great semiotician Roland Barthes had some taut remarks about this strategy when it was used by '60s university students heartlessly appropriating the clothes of the poor.

Happily, McCain was a changed man when he gave his concession speech. Finally free of handlers, able to be the man he really is, his body softened. An Italian tailor could have done wonders with that version of McCain.

Cindy McCain is so rigid herself that if she bent at the waist she'd snap off. She wore irreproachable European retro-lady clothing that concealed her body and emanated Do Not Touch. Looking like something caught in a snare, her scarily thin Maris Crane-like body felt safe in those padded fabrics, and good for her.

I liked Sarah Palin's new wardrobe, which did her a certain amount of justice. Her pencil skirts clung to her terrific curves but things got boxier up top so as not to trouble the base voters. A fecund woman in a political party that deplores sexual display, even in the context of a husband and five children, she had to look folksy-sexy, to celebrate her good looks while blurring them. She spent too much money only because she was in a huge hurry to approach a basically unachievable look.

Battle fatigues

A man's clothes are what they are: shirt, pants, it's pretty standard camouflage. But a woman's clothes are her armour, to protect her from the antagonism regularly displayed to women in public life, and she adjusts her armour for each particular audience. It's not easy to do - Princess Diana had years to perfect it and she had Catherine Walker, a genius of a dressmaker, on her side - Palin had two department stores, a credit card and a crazy dream.

She did well; Valentino for her first convention speech was perfect: a breast-concealing blazer in an ivory silk weave that looked like fish skin. She looked attractive but not offensively so, as a Republican might put it.

The GOP has sent a lawyer to Alaska to retrieve the clothes. Just as you crack open a lobster, the party is removing Palin's carapace, and that's harsh.

What puzzled me was that no one ever questioned Palin's foreign purchases. Carla Bruni is trying to go French. Michelle Obama buys American-designed clothes, including from J. Crew. Barack Obama is said to buy from Hartmarx, a venerable Chicago firm with a union label. The McCains shouldn't have worn Chanel and Ferragamo; it betrayed a lack of understanding of why Americans no longer manufacture much and what it feels like to lose your job to China.

I haven't discussed the sartorial side of Canadian politics. It's just weird beards and sweater vests here.

But keep an eye on the Obamas; next year we'll be dressing like them and looking the better for it.