As for Michelle Obama, Lagerfeld describes her as a “handsome woman, but with no fashion image yet.” He continues, “That will come with the function, I hope.”
While his lock on Hollywood is well known, Giorgio Armani has also dressed Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Pelosi and Maria Shriver—as well as Clinton and Merkel—a feat he characterizes simply as “giving a helping hand” to women in important positions. His newest recruit is 32-year-old Mara Carfagna, Italy’s stunning new minister for equal opportunities, a former model and television starlet who chose a pale, curve-hugging Armani pantsuit for her swearing-in ceremony in May. “Politicians are real people going about their work in the real world,” Armani says. “There is no reason why a female politician should not be able to express her own style just as another woman in the workplace.”
From her pink-walled, prism-filled headquarters in New York’s Meatpacking District, Diane von Furstenberg points out that putting one’s threads on the backs of the powerful is a very old tradition, dating back to the days of Europe’s czars and kings. “You know where the word ‘royalties’ comes from?” she asks in her seductive, come-hither voice, smoothing back a few errant curls as she recounts how kings created the payment scheme whereby companies that made rugs, tableware and the like could market themselves as “suppliers to the court” in exchange for payments. “It’s absolutely a normal thing to do,” says von Furstenberg, who dressed Betty Ford in the Seventies and dresses a number of European royals today, among them Crown Princesses Victoria of Sweden and Mary of Denmark. “Anybody in power, they have their own personality and therefore they wear what fits their personality. That’s what clothes are about.”
Arguably, political figures today enjoy more fashion latitude than ever, which opens the door for designers to showcase the latest trends—up to a point. While women might have felt compelled to wear pants and power suits when they first conquered the corridors of the corporate world in the Seventies and Eighties, “today for a woman, even in the workplace, looking feminine and looking great is an asset,” figures Oscar de la Renta, the go-to guy for scores of American politicians, several first ladies and even first daughter Jenna Bush, who walked down the aisle at her May wedding in a slender, embroidered white silk organza de la Renta gown. “They should [dress well], for their sake and our sake.”
And de la Renta is well aware that their votes of confidence boost his profile in stores. “Fashion is nonpolitical; it’s commerce,” he says between fittings for his cruise collection. “Any kind of publicity like that, from the left or the right, is good. It creates public awareness of the clothes.”
