Barry Fashionable (Pun!)

Tina Brown wrote a really fascinating article about the style and sex appeal of Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. (Cause, let's be honest, they're both pretty—even if SOMEBODY is way less attractive when she opens her mouth.) The piece gets at why Palin will cling to her new look after Tues., why Bill Clinton & John McCain despise Obama's put-together-ness, and why Obama's look plays in Peoria...and the Lower East Side:

"I can’t say if those hand-pressed looking shirts are made of the finest Egyptian cotton or not—maybe they're from Costco—but the point is they suggest it. The simplicity of Obama’s lean, monochrome suits and solid blue ties makes every other pol appear porky and plebeian, old school glad-handers in oversize watches. It’s not just the clothes, of course. It’s the wearer—his carriage, the loping grace of his walk to the stage.

It’s also that the way he’s put together works simultaneously south of the Mason-Dixon line and south of 14th Street. When Obama works a rope line to most people he just looks neatly dressed. But to others he looks as stylishly minimalist as one of those Meatpacking District boutiques where a few shirts are piled artfully on otherwise empty shelves. It’s a little like the Republicans’ dog-whistle rhetoric, in which routine-sounding words like 'worldview' and 'wonder-working' convey a special, coded meaning to Christian conservatives. Obama's look conveys the message of a new world order to the young."

While Palin's look is new to the pol arena, much has been made of Obama fashion in the last year. Last spring (March, me thinks?), Paper magazine did a fashion story inspired by ol' Barry.



More where this came from at Rod 2.0.Then, earlier this month, he popped up on Paris (that's right: not NYC) runways. Like, literally: Jean-Charles de Castelbajac did an in-your-FACE sequins dress (in yellow, not orange...wah) w/ Obama's mug on it. Granted, this was as much about him as his look, but Bill Clinton sure never got fashion designer attentions.

L: Sonia Rykiel, R: Jean-Charles de Castelbajac by way of NYMag.com, which has more on the Parisian appreciation for B.O. Wow, that takes a double meaning in this case.