Animal prints on television

We've talked about prints on television quite a lot, and it may seem sort of arbitrary what "works" and what ends up all wavy looking. But consider what happened when Rep. Barbara Lee made remarks last week on the House floor in honor of Black History Month.  Here she is on c-span:




And now here she is again, with video uploaded to YouTube:



A dramatic difference, isn't it?  As the video quality breaks down, so does the pattern on her jacket.  She looks great in HD, but not in you average web video.  Same camera, same footage, different results.

Warren suits up

If you follow me on twitter, you know that I have been looking forward to writing about Elizabeth Warren in her new role with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This excitement has a lot to do with her hair. Warren's signature bob is distinctive, flattering, and easy to care for.

Up until now, her clothing style has been, well, mostly professorial, even as she came to Washington to work with TARP. Turtlenecks, cardigans and soft shapes were main features in her wardrobe. So it was interesting to see that for the day of her appointment in the Rose Garden and subsequent interviews in the media, she chose a jacket instead:

This is definitely a more business-like look, although funnel neck hearkens back to the turtlenecks of the past - the high necks work well with her hairstyle in particular.

My favorite part, though, is the animal print on the cuffs. Not only does it lighten up the severity of the jacket, it lends a sartorial nod to the idea that Warren is ready to "roll up her sleeves" and get this new agency up and running.

Ginny Brown Waite gets it right

We've seen before that there's a right way and a wrong way to wear animal print. Rep. Ginny Brown Waite's House remarks on the National Flood Insurance Program gave us another example of the right way:

She follows our two basic rules of wearing animal print:

• Abstract scale - this is a large leopard print
• Minimal proportion in the outfit - the bold print appears on the scarf, and the rest of the outfit is relatively simple.

See? It's easy.

Kathy Dahlkemper in too much of a good thing

Back in February, we saw Kathy Dahlkemper make very successful use of animal print in her wardrobe. I encouraged you to learn from her example by sticking to two fairly simple guidelines:

1. Use a print in an abstract scale.
2. Keep the proportion of your outfit in animal print minimal.

These were useful guidelines, which Rep. Dahlkemper illustrated perfectly. So I cannot explain to you why just two months later, she violated both of them:

This jacket is so distracting that I actually checked her official biography to make sure she doesn't have a hobby of big game hunting that I didn't know about - searching from some reason, any reason why she would choose to wear this. It's so unfortunate, because the congresswoman clearly had something to say about defense spending, but she's being drowned out by her clothes.

Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper discusses statutory pay-go

Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper spoke on the House floor about statutory pay-go legislation. She wore leopard print. Don't be alarmed:

It probably goes without saying that animal prints can be tricky to wear in the public realm. There are two reasons why this outfit works:

1. Scale. This is a large leopard print, which makes it a bit more abstract and moves away from looking like she's literally wearing an animal skin.

2. Proportion. The amount the print in her outfit is limited to less than a quarter of what we can see on camera, and less than 10% of her entire outfit.

You can do it, just be aware of scale and proportion, and keep the rest of your outfit very simple. Really. Don't be afraid.