We Can All Learn Something From Michelle Obama's ‘ Soft Power ' Style

COULD MICHELLE OBAMA be the greatest fashion icon of our times? The outfit she chose to kick off her 12-stop book tour earlier this month to promote her memoir Becoming certainly suggests that.

- Rebecca Lowthorpe

Part rock concert, part political rally, part chat show (she was interviewed by Oprah), the former First Lady of the United States appeared on stage in front of 14,000 roaring fans wearing an off-the-shoulder sequin top and high-waist trousers – all in white – the colour used to signify hope, openness and new beginnings.

Oh, how we marvel at her relatability, her warmth, her empathy, her cleverness and charisma! Don’t we all want to meet her? Know her? Be embraced by her! (‘Always hugger-in-chief ’, as she calls herself on Instagram.) And aren’t we all in awe of her elegance? The woman who has long turned soft power dressing into an art form invites sartorial analysis – whether she likes it or not.

‘It seemed that my clothes mattered more to people than anything I had to say,’ she writes in her memoir. But rather than bemoan the fact – or ignore fashion altogether, like so many women in the public eye – she sought to harness its power. ‘Optics governed more or less everything in the political world, and I factored this into every outfit,’ she reveals. And so, with the help of her stylist, Meredith Koop, she turned her carefully curated wardrobe into a strategic opportunity, albeit one that felt natural, never forced. ‘I tried to reframe it as an opportunity to learn, to use what power I could find inside a situation I’d never have chosen for myself. If people flipped through a magazine primarily to see the clothes I was wearing, I hoped they’d also see the military spouse standing next to me or read what I had to say about children’s health.’