Classic Palin

Sarah Palin appeared at Glenn Beck's rally this weekend in what we now think of as a classic Palin look:

She has returned to the high hairstyle, which may or may not involve a Bumpit. She wears white, the color of hope and new beginnings (notwithstanding her stated position on "the hopey-changey stuff"). The white also serves to make her look glowing, healthy and vital as she stands against the relatively natural backdrop of stone steps. She has a large and prominent jeweled flag pin. I was a little puzzled by her choice of wedge sandals as footwear, until I considered how they add to her height, along with her hair. All of this put together? We're back in candidate mode here folks. Gone are the retro throwbacks and the tough leather jackets. Candidate Palin looks tall, clean and shiny.

Sarah Palin's new book

I would have written a post about the cover photo for Sarah Palin's new book, America by Heart.

But Michael Shaw at BagNews has already said it all, so I don't have to. What to make of her clothes, jewelry and photo selection? Check out his post here.

Palin's wardrobe deja vu

Did you see the photos from Sarah Palin's Tea Party speech yesterday?

You read that correctly.  That was yesterday.  Does her outfit look familiar?  Oh wait, it does:

That was during her 2008 Vice Presidential run.

Now, I know I said earlier this week that I think Palin can and probably should keep wearing leather, including leather jackets. But this outfit, and this red leather jacket in particular, became one of the most prominent symbols of the firestorm surrounding her wardrobe during the campaign. For the record, these are two different jackets, so we can probably assume that the 2008 version was in fact donated to charity as the campaign said it would be. But the similarity is absurd. Could this possibly be a coincidence? I think probably not. What a clever way to thumb her nose a her detractors.

Fey wears leather as Palin, but you don't have to

I suspect by now that everyone saw Tina Fey's appearance on SNL last night as Sarah Palin, but if you missed it, here it is:


She's recreating a Palin look from last month at a McCain rally, featuring a black leather motorcycle jacket. We've seen Palin in leather before, most memorably in a red fitted jacket during the 2008 campaign. Although I've said before that Palin's stylist made some serious missteps in the labels she chose for her client, for Palin, leather itself was an appropriate choice. She looked good, the jacket was on trend, and of course we know how much our leaders love red. Although this more recent jacket was perhaps not as successful from a style perspective, mostly because of the mash-up of jewelry that accompanied it, I see no reason why Palin shouldn't continue to include leather selectively in her wardrobe. The trend isn't going anywhere, and for her it provides sartorial support for her pro-hunting stance.

Palin isn't the only one grabbing headlines with leather lately. Rosa DeLauro's pink leather jacket got a lot of attention during the health care vote, as only one of several Congresswomen wearing leather in March. This trend is prominent on both sides of the aisle.

Although the Humane Society Legislative Fund gave DeLauro a perfect score on their most recent report card, she apparently hasn't made the leap yet to removing leather from her wardrobe, the way her House colleague Jared Polis has. But what if she decided to take leather jackets out of her wardrobe? There's no reason why she couldn't still incorporate the motorcycle jacket trend into her look. She (and you) would have two options:

1. Faux leather. This idea has something of a bad rap, and to be sure, there's a lot of ugly vinyl out there. You do have to choose carefully, but finishes and textures of faux leather have improved dramatically in recent years, and it can often be hard to tell the difference.

Faux Leather by StyleofPolitics featuring Calvin Klein jackets

Items in this set:
Calvin Klein Faux Leather Jacket, $86
Ashley B by Bernardo Distressed Faux Leather Jacket, $78
New York & Company - Outerwear - Faux Leather Motorcycle Jacket, $45
Sam Saboura Faux-Luxe Leather Moto Jacket at HSN.com, $40

That difficulty in telling the difference, though, could leave you with some problems. If the point you're trying to make is not to wear leather, then wearing something that looks so much like leather could at best go unnoticed and at worst leave you needing a press release to explain your jacket every time you wear it. Which leads me to...

2. Other materials. Motorcycle-style jackets come in a wide variety of materials now, creating a look at least as chic as the original leather designs. And in the case of cotton and linen, these can be light enough to wear well in to the spring.

Not Leather Jackets by StyleofPolitics featuring American Eagle Outfitters jackets

Items in this set:
Three Dots - Stretch Denim L/S Motorcycle Jacket (Black) - Apparel, $210
Nic+Zoe - Knit Motorcycle Jacket (Teak) - Apparel, $135
Lauren by Ralph Lauren French Rib Cotton Moto Jacket, $100
American Eagle AE Women's Canvas Moto Jacket Tan, $60

Both of these alternatives also have the added benefit of being significantly less expensive than leather, which leaves some of your budget for other investments.

Bachmann and Palin take a trip to the 1980s

If Michele Bachmann didn't say the year at the start of this clip, you could be forgiven for guessing the year was perhaps 1984. Both she and Sarah Palin sport some serious throwback styles here:


Now, I know the '80s are having a comeback right now. But you have to be careful.

The combination of the stiff, shiny fabric, the yellow/black color combination, the standup collar and the pushed up sleeves on Rep. Bachmann's jacket cross the line from modern trend to dated look. Her teased hairstyle exacerbates the problem.

Sarah Palin is definitely suffering from a moment of over-accessorization. Jewelry + flag pin + sequined jacket = a lot of look. The layering of pearls and cross also reminds me very strongly of Like A Virgin-era Madonna, and I can't be the only one. I'm sure that's not what she was going for.

I don't know about you, but I'm rather disturbed by hearing Michele Bachmann introduce Sarah Palin by emphasizing, in part, that she is "drop dead gorgeous." Here we are, carefully considering what we wear to produce a polished, professional image, but if the first thing people have to say about us is that we're pretty, we'll go with that? To hell with professional and appropriate if we can be "drop dead gorgeous" instead? Don't get me wrong, gorgeous has a place. We all want to be gorgeous sometimes. But it shouldn't be a professional qualification unless you're a model. How disappointing.

Political fashion history: Geraldine Ferraro 1984

March is Women's History Month, so let's have a look back at what women in politics were wearing in the past. Today: Geraldine Ferraro's Vice-Presidential run in 1984.

When I started looking at some of the iconic press photographs from the campaign, I was struck by how feminine her look was. For example, here's her Time Magazine cover from July 23, 1984:

She's wearing a dress and long pearls. Not a suit, not black. Of course, this dress is that bright red that we know so well in politics today as The Red Jacket. But there's no hint here of "dressing like a man" that we hear about (and fear) for women in politics today.

The shapes she wore were feminine too. Look at this campaign photo:

Dusty blue, pearls again, and a soft shape to the dress with a decidedly girly short-sleeved jacket.

We can contrast this with what Sarah Palin wore as a vice-presidential candidate 24 years later:

While this Valentino jacket later became infamous for its price point, no one argued with it style, which was structured, covered up and achromatic. Practically the polar opposite of Ferraro's red, delicate dress. I'm not sure if this is progress or not, but it's notable.

Sarah Palin delivers keynote at National Tea Party Convention

Sarah Palin delivered the keynote speech at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville yesterday. She wore a black suit:

In fact, she wore all black - black skirt suit, sheer black hose and very high black platform heels. Those heels, along with a long rope necklace partially hidden under her lapel, remind me of the chic look she became known for during her 2008 Vice Presidential campaign. But this black monochrome color palette and the looser tailoring of the suit are clear (and successful) attempts to downplay her wardrobe choices which caused so much controversy. I'm almost certainly not the only one writing about what she wore yesterday, so she gave us very little to write about, which was a shrewd choice.

Palin vs. Obama: A Manufactured Debate

I don't know whether you saw Cathy Horyn's piece in the New York Times last week on the styles of Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama. Given the Christmas Eve timing, I hadn't until the Mrs. O blog brought it to my attention. Mrs. T and her commenters largely get it right, and I encourage you to read.

Horyn's biases and contradictions have already been thoroughly highlighted, but if you ever wondered why Michelle Obama never appears in this space, it is precisely because of the false comparison Horyn tries to set up in her article. Their purposes and roles are fundamentally different. The First Lady is not elected, appointed or hired. It's a role, not a job. We're talking about the working women here.

Palin, the Stylist, and the Budget

This week, the stylist who dressed Sarah Palin and her family during the campaign "came out" and identified herself in response to Ms. Palin's mention of her (although not by name) in her new book. The story broke in the form of an interview in the New York Times with Lisa A. Kline, which you can read here.

Kline defends the job she did, stating:
A. She was given very little time to get the family outfitted, so she had to pay retail prices.
B. No one on the campaign gave her a budget or questioned how much she spent.

And after doing that job, we know there were two significant results:
1. Her clients looked great.
2. It didn't matter how great her clients looked, because their clothes created a huge media firestorm.

So what went wrong here? Kline wants us to acknowledge points A and B and subsequently give her credit for result 1, but no blame for result 2. I can't do that, and here's why.

It's true, she had very little time, and that with more time, she could have procured many of those clothes directly from designers and using professional discounts instead of going to Saks and paying full retail. But come on, does anyone really believe that the public would have been more accepting of a Valentino jacket that she got for $1,000 through an insider discount, instead of the full price $2,500? The problem here was that she fundamentally did not know who her client was or what image she was trying to project. It was as if she had shopped for a "politician" stock character with brown hair and a nice figure instead of understanding who the governor of Alaska was and what her political image was all about. New York magazine is right in saying that even the average American "doesn't go to T.J. Maxx when they're in a pinch," but if Ms. Kline had taken the same shopping trip to Macy's instead of Saks and Neiman Marcus, we would be having a much different conversation right now. Ms. Palin wouldn't have been as chic or as elegant, but for this client, that probably would have been a lot more comfortable.

Kline also reminds us that no one questioned her spending, and wants us to conclude that there was no way she could have understood that she was out of line on this project. That's a pretty embarrassing abdication of responsibility. She was hired to be the clothing expert for this campaign. Who should know what this wardrobe should cost better than she does? Simply because the campaign (or a private/secret donor or whoever) had the money doesn't mean it was appropriate to spend that much. It was her job to take responsibility for the look of this family - not just ensuring that the clothes look good, but also considering what the clothes say. I can only conclude that Ms. Kline was not up to the job.

There have been people who try to claim that the male candidates were wearing suits that cost at least as much if not more and aren't criticized, and so scrutiny of the cost of Palin's wardrobe is therefore sexist. This, of course, is not true. Do you remember John Edwards's $200 haircut? That was a story for weeks.

A good stylist has to think about these things. All of them. Looking good is not enough.

Sarah Palin calls Newsweek's reprint of her Runner's World photo sexist

I have some ambivalence about covering this story at all, but I think we have something to learn here, so I will. By now, you've probably seen that this week's cover of Newsweek features a photo of Sarah Palin in running shorts and sneakers that originally appeared in Runner's World magazine, under the headline "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah?"

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Ms. Palin called this use of the photo "sexist" on her facebook page, a claim that Tina Brown counters in the clip above (or in this article, almost verbatim) as being no worse than provocative photos of Bill Clinton or Elliot Spitzer in the recent past. I agree with that comparison, and also with Brown's conclusion that Ms. Palin's outrage is largely for effect.

But as I said, we have something to learn here. Why is this photo embarrassing? It's not because she's wearing short running shorts. There's nothing wrong with them, actually, and she has a great figure. The problem here is the context in which she's wearing them. Even though this photo was taken for a running magazine, she's not running. She's not at a gym or outside. She's posing like a beauty queen, leaning on an artfully draped flag. It's a portrait, and no one should show that much leg in a portrait. If she were running down a road, or running on a treadmill, or even standing on a treadmill as if she had just stopped running, the photo would not have the same effect. There would be no story here. So the moral of the story is not that you should never be photographed in anything other than a jacket and pearls. It's the same as everything else - you simply need to wear the right clothes for each occasion.

And did you notice her warm up jacket? It's red.

Michele Bachmann: A Color Comparison

I almost don't want to write about Rep. Michele Bachmann's clothes because articles like this lead me to believe she may soon go the way of Sarah Palin in scrutiny of her wardrobe (among other things). But these two recent clips demonstrate very well why it does in fact matter what color you wear.

The first example is from her remarks on the House floor about global warming back in April:



She's wearing slate gray, as she often does. This is a great color for her. Her hair color looks warm, and it makes her eyes look bright (hard to tell in this video, but check out this photo).

In contrast, the second example is from her remarks at the Heritage Foundation in response to Keith Olbermann's criticism:



The brown color of this blouse is almost the same color as her hair, making her look like one big splotch of brown. It also looks too big for her, and appears to be maybe corduroy? That's a pretty casual fabric. All of those elements add up to an unusually sloppy look for the Congresswoman.

Both gray and brown are good neutral colors, but not all neutrals are created equal!