It didn’t take long for former first lady Michelle Obama to reminisce about the White House’ East Wing.
Obama was speaking in front of a captive audience in Washington, DC, for a live podcast taping about her new book, “The Look,” when she compared the brightly colored outfits she wore as first lady to the work she did in the East Wing, which President Donald Trump tore down earlier this year to build a ballroom.
“It felt like the East Wing was where there was color and light and joy,” Obama told moderator and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wesley Morris.
She explained that, for her and her husband, former President Barack Obama, the East Wing was about welcoming the American people – both in a literal sense, as it served as the visitor’s entrance to the White House, and through the work they did there.
“We were thinking about those kids like us who were outside of the gates of the South Lawn looking in … not knowing what it is be in the White House … because a lot of those kids didn’t feel invited in,” Michelle Obama said. “Our goal was to make that house as open as possible and the East Wing, that was the place where that got done.”
Throughout her White House tenure and beyond, Michelle Obama’s fashion choices have been driven by that desire to welcome and embrace the public.
In her new book, written with her longtime stylist Meredith Koop, the former first lady takes readers on a journey through the evolution of her clothes, hair and makeup from a kid growing up on the South Side of Chicago, to her time in the White House, and now as a political and cultural symbol.
“The point isn’t the look,” she said, alluding to the book’s title. “It’s us looking out for the country. It’s us looking out for the nation. It’s us looking out for all those people who are depending on us. …The look goes both ways,” she said.
‘Can I hug somebody in it?’
During her eight years as first lady, Obama was constantly on the move. Some days, she said, she would go from giving a speech to digging in her vegetable garden on the White House lawn with children.
She ran NFL drills and played soccer with David Beckham to promote her “Let’s Move!” initiative against childhood obesity. She visited preschool classrooms and traveled to Africa to encourage young women to stay in school.
The clothes she wore needed to keep up with that activity, Obama told the podcast taping’s studio audience.
“I was concerned about ‘Can I hug somebody in it? Will it get dirty?” she told Morris.
“The thing about clothes that I find is that they can welcome people in or they can keep people away, and if you’re so put together and so precious and things are so crisp and the pin is so big, it can just tell people, ‘Don’t touch me,’” she said.
‘Not a DEI hire’
The designers Obama chose to create her clothing as first lady were intentional, too, she told the crowd at the taping of “IMO: The Look.”
When Obama walked out in 2009 at her husband’s inaugural ball in a white silk, one-shoulder gown by Jason Wu, she helped catapult the young designer to fame. The choice made a statement.
“This was not a DEI hire. It was the prettiest gown,” Obama said. “He just happened to be an immigrant kid, new to the business, who happened to be as talented, if not more than some of the greats who always got those opportunities.”
Obama said she could have chosen a gown from Oscar de la Renta, who dressed first ladies Jackie Kennedy, Nancy Reagan and Hillary Clinton in addition to herself. But Wu, in addition to making her feel “ethereal,” also played into the administration’s message.
“That’s what we were trying to do with the choices that we made was to change lives, to say something different about who belonged, and who was good enough,” Obama said.
Karissa Waddick, a reporter on USA TODAY’s Nation Desk, can be reached at kwaddick@usatoday.com.