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Obama's first fashion faux pas

January 29th 2009 22:08
Retro Barack Obama in the Harvard library

Barack Obama is widely praised for his fashion sense - his effortless ease at finding the right fabrics and making sure his pant legs hang low enough.

The above image, from If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, shows a young Obama, relaxed in casual gear, but still bright-eyed and ambitious, posing in front of those solemn law volumes.

It seems only natural, then, that Obama-as-President would continue to receive praise from fashionistas and sartorialists alike.

Well, no - our collective magnifying glass culture loves to find people at the top, then knock them down for being 'not-quite-perfect'.

In this case, there's some minor issue over Obama's choice of dress for the Inauguration ball, where he arrived, dressed in white tie.

Here's the photo:

Obama in white tie fashion faux pas


This is from Luxist.com, where they disapprove of Obama wearing white tie with a notched lapel dinner jacket.

"In Dressing the Man, Flusser writes, "The whole idea of a formal suit [i.e. tuxedo] is to distinguish itself from the notch-lapel business suit, not replicate it." Flusser declares that a dinner jacket with notched lapels is nothing short of a "sartorial oxymoron, convoluting both the form's aesthetic logic and its promise of timeless elegance." A proper dinner jacket should have peaked lapels, or, for slightly less formal occasions, a shawl collar. As for the white bow tie, that should only ever be worn with tails - hence the classic "white tie and tails" - and should never be satin."

That's right, President Obama.... your bowtie should never be satin.

Harrumph. Pshaw!

Anyway, it's a trifling matter, for now, as heaps of fashion advisers are likely to throw their advice his way, and, hopefully, Obama will take the humble route and learn from it all.... before he ends up looking disheveled next to another world leader - like Bush when he met French president Sarkozy!

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