Just Like Fashion It’s A Passion For The With It And Hip
The Times gins up some page views compares Michelle Obama’s and Sarah Palin’s style. In making the two women a focal point for the year, the piece veers from lists of peripherally related issues to what their choices seem to typify so that initially it’s hard to find a main idea other than: look! (Poor Cindy McCain. No style piece for you).
For some reason, both the Times and I think of Michelle by first name and Palin by last name (check the file names for the slide shows).
Both women look terrific. But as the article goes on, it decides that it feels antagonistic towards Michelle. Of her choices in labels it says:
[They] are all insider, apart from her shorts and those strategically worn plebe numbers from Target and Talbots. If she got any more insider, she’d be backing down a runway. She wears Rodarte, Jason Wu, Sophie Theallet, Narciso Rodriguez, Thakoon, Isabel Toledo and Rick Owens, labels that in terms of creativity and price are at the highest level of fashion. Go much higher and you hit couture.
Sly writing, relying on a winked shared assumption (insider=bad) without offering a rationale. There are the kind of ‘insider’ things that make no sense without a reference point (4chan jokes, for example), and there are the kind of ‘insider’ things that those on the outside may not know or care that they’re missing. And maybe Michelle likes to showcase up-and-coming designers. But no:
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