US Election: Michelle Obama beats Ann Romney in the style stakes

Michelle Obama in a purple dress; Ann Romney shows her wild side in an orange zebra print shirt Photo: GETTY/ REX.

America has not quite concluded which of their husbands should be its commander-in-chief. However in one trifling yet telling arena - assessing the fashion credentials of Michelle Obama and Ann Romney - the nation appears to have decided already.

During the last four years Mrs Obama has emerged as the most potently-attired FLOTUS since Jackie Kennedy. Sweeping aside the loftily genteel, BBC newsreader formality of Laura Bush, Nancy Reagan and even the be-trousered Hillary Clinton before her, Mrs Obama has won the hearts and minds of clothes-conscious Americans with a two-pronged fashion strategy.

 

Her first innovation has been to embrace democratic dressing. Whether on the White House lawn or in talk-show studios, her regular outings in Converse All-Star pumps, jeans and other inexpensive garments from popular retailers including H&M, J.Crew, Asos, Zara, Target and Gap have all transmitted the message that Mrs Obama is as much an American everywoman as she is its First Lady. So well-received was this policy, particularly in the earliest months of the Obama presidency, that a study printed in the Harvard Business Review showed a significant spike in retailers' share value every time she wore their clothes.

 

Pretty in pink: Ann Romney and Michelle Obama cosy up to their leading men in pink on October 16 in Hempstead, New York. Photo:

 

Michelle Obama's second fashion innovation has been to champion the cause of American high-fashion simply by wearing it. Despite flirtations with Moschino and Alexander McQueen, she tends to patronise home-grown designers including Tom Ford, Barbara Tfank, Jason Wu, Narciso Rodriguez, Thakoon, Prabal Gurung, Isabel Toledo and Tracy Reese. Some of these designers, formerly obscure, have had their profiles boosted immeasurably by Mrs Obama, whose every public appearance is record by a series of well-read fashion 'look-book' websites.

And if Michelle Obama loves American fashion, American fashion loves her back: it is estimated that Anna Wintour, the British-born editor of US Vogue magazine, has boosted the Obama re-election campaign by $500,000 through fund-raising events. 

So what of Ann Romney? Well, although an extremely elegant woman, she has been rather cold-shouldered by fashion and those who follow it. When she wore a Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress in Florida last month, a spokesman for the avowedly Democrat designer reportedly sniffed that he "wasn't quite sure" how she'd got hold of it: presumably, Mrs Romney bought it from a shop. Despite her fondness for wearing clothes by America's fashion classicist-in-chief, Oscar de la Renta, at big-ticket evening events, it has emerged that Mrs Romney's chief long-standing fashion alignment is with a hitherto unknown designer named Alfred Fiandaca.

Mr Fiandaca told New York Magazine that when choosing her dresses, Mrs Romney likes to anticipate the tastes of Mr Romney, adding: "He likes a waistline, and he likes her to show her figure off. He's always staring her up and down and smiling."

Some frankly undignified speculation as to whether she favours voluminous, Mormon-advocated "temple" underwear aside, this is as excited as America becomes about Mrs Romney fashion tastes. Yet should, tomorrow, she emerge as America's new First Lady, fashion might just mysteriously change its mind.

US..Fashion