It was a strong day for coats. Senator Bernie Sanders, for instance, arrived at the most pomp-heavy and paparazzied political event of the year in a gruff, no-nonsense taupe parka from the Vermont-based snowboarding company Burton, which he paired with a pair of chunky, hand-knit mittens made from recycled wool. Would we expect anything less? The mittens were not new; Sanders wore several similar pairs along the campaign trail last year (they were a gift from Jen Ellis, a teacher and friend of Sanders’s daughter-in-law who makes knitted goods for craft fairs in her spare time). The jacket was also making a repeat appearance; it was an old Christmas gift from Sanders’s stepson, Dave Driscoll, the same windbreaker that Sanders wore in his viral “I Am Once Again Asking” campaign video. Driscoll originally worked with Burton to craft a custom version of the jacket with Sanders’s face printed on the back; according to Sanders’s wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders, the senator liked it so much that Driscoll gave him his own version without the face. (Like a real crunchy Vermont dad, Sanders seems to loathe visible branding.) A picture of the senator sitting alone at the Inauguration, with his legs and arms crossed against his body, has already become a meme. “Vermont jacket, Vermont gloves, Vermont common sense!” O’Meara Sanders tweeted. The photograph telegraphs a lovable air of grumpasaurus chic—a distinct “I’m not really here to socialize, but you kids go along and have fun” energy. Sanders’s anti-fashion felt, in a way, like an anchor—a reminder, after a day full of celebration and palpable, almost ecstatic relief, that there is still much work to be done.
But first, there would be glamour. Remember glamour? Remember thinking of political fashion choices as coded messages of competence and optimism rather than as trollish ostentation? This Inauguration marked, among other things, a sartorial shift in tone from that of four years ago. On January 20, 2017, Melania Trump wore a pert, baby-blue Ralph Lauren shift and matching bolero and spike heels that hinted at Jacqueline Onassis cosplay but felt cold and over-polished, like a marble foyer. (It was one of the last times that she would wear an American designer to a major event; for the majority of her First Ladyship, including her departure from the White House, on Wednesday, she swanned about in European clothes, namely Valentino, Pucci, Givenchy, and her trademark Louboutin heels.) The entire Trump Inauguration was a tangle of conflicting aesthetics; fashionwise, every person seemed out for himself. Kellyanne Conway wore a Gucci military coat that made her look like a Revolutionary War reënactor. Trump himself wore a red tie as long as a cartoon dog’s tongue. The Obamas came dressed in understated garments, Michelle in an austere, maroon Jason Wu wool ensemble with her hair pulled back in a severe bun. She later told the press that she “stopped even trying to smile” that day.
On Wednesday, Michelle Obama wore a similar shade again—perhaps intentionally—but this time her outfit was sumptuous and jubilant: flowing, plum-colored high-waisted pants with a matching turtleneck and duster coat from the New York-based designer Sergio Hudson (who also works with Beyoncé and Rihanna). She wore her hair long and loose, in bouncy barrel curls, looking both comfortable and exquisite. You didn’t have to see her mouth, which was covered with a silk mask from the New York tailor Christy Rilling, to know that she was smiling.
Michelle Obama was only one of the women who chose to wear purple, a color that not only nods to bipartisanship (red plus blue) but to the early days of the suffrage movement. Hillary Clinton wore an eggplant-colored, ruffled pantsuit from Ralph Lauren, while Vice-President Kamala Harris took her oath wearing a swishy royal-purple dress-and-coat ensemble from the twenty-seven-year-old queer, Black, New York-based designer Christopher John Rogers, who is best known for his voluminous, holographic silk creations that drape across the body in playful proportions. Jill Biden also went with a relatively unknown New York designer, Alexandra O’Neill, who launched her line, Markarian, out of her Greenwich Village apartment, in 2017. On Wednesday afternoon I spoke to O’Neill, who told me that, though Dr. Biden’s team (led by the stylist Bailey Moon) reached out in December about creating an outfit for the new First Lady, she had no idea until Inauguration Day that Biden had selected her look to wear. O’Neill said that the Prussian-blue dress with matching coat took three weeks to make, and that she hand-embellished the neckline and the coat herself with hundreds of Swarovski crystals. In an official release, O’Neill explained that she and Dr. Biden’s team agreed on the color blue “for the pieces to signify trust, confidence, and stability.”
There was a seamlessness to the day’s aesthetic, a kind of pre-planned choreography that seemed to telegraph that all parties involved had received the memo; besides a prevailing message of unity, logistics and coördination—the low-humming engines that can make or break Administrations—were the real stars of the show. The event’s musical performers—Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, and Garth Brooks—came out one after the other in red (Gaga, in a Schiaparelli Couture gown and a giant “dove of peace” brooch), white (J. Lo. in a full Chanel getup), and blue (Brooks, in the classic Oklahoma uniform of jeans and a hammered silver belt). Both President Biden and Doug Emhoff, our first Second Gentleman, wore Ralph Lauren suits. The effect was purposeful, collaborative, and coherent—we are not used to seeing political figures working together on something as simple and soothing as color blocking.
And then there were the small flashes of forward-thinking style onstage, mostly from the youngest attendees. There was the twenty-two-year old National Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman, looking like a sunbeam in a lemon-yellow Prada coat with a red satin Prada headband that formed a halo around her face, a clever nod to Jackie Kennedy’s favored Oleg Cassini pillbox hats. (Gorman said she wore the sunny coat as a wink to Jill Biden, who invited her to speak at the Inauguration after seeing a video of Gorman reading her work in a yellow dress.) There was Nikolas Ajagu, Kamala Harris’s nephew-in-law, in a pair of Dior 1 sneakers, and Maisy Biden, President Biden’s granddaughter, in a pair of Air Jordan 1 Mid Sisterhoods. (The Vice-President, a well-documented sneaker fan, wore Manolo Blahniks.) There was Harris’s niece, Meena Harris, in a shimmery teal Ulla Johnson dress with a green Coach shearling jacket and silver stiletto boots, looking like a rugged mermaid on her way to a disco. And, most memorably, there was Kamala Harris’s twenty-one-year-old stepdaughter, Ella Emhoff, who is studying textile design at Parsons and whose Instagram has become a zany showcase for her raver-meets-cottage core sense of style. For the Inauguration, Emhoff wore a bejewelled plaid coat with a crisp Johnny collar from Miu Miu, a high-fashion label that feels deeply art school in its references. (I imagine we will see several TikToks instructing D.I.Y. enthusiasts on how to bedazzle their own knockoffs by week’s end.)
Though Sanders and his grandfatherly mittens were the dominant meme of the day, a GIF of Ella Emhoff, wagging her eyebrows as the Pences made their arrival, may prove to be the more lasting image of the moment. Decked out in gemstones, Emhoff dared to be silly, to chance a bit of impish lightness. It felt like a gesture, if not so much of hope, then at least of buoyancy. As for the former Vice-President, he and his wife both wore solemn, solid black. It was as if they were attending a funeral, or at least a far different kind of party than everyone else. Which, in a way, they were.
Read More About the Presidential Transition
- Donald Trump has survived impeachment, twenty-six sexual-misconduct accusations, and thousands of lawsuits. His luck may well end now that Joe Biden is the next President.
- With litigation unlikely to change the outcome of the election, Republicans are looking to strategies that might remain even after rebuffs both at the polls and in court.
- With the Trump Presidency ending, we need to talk about how to prevent the moral injuries of the past four years from happening again.
- If 2020 has demonstrated anything, it is the need to rebalance the economy to benefit the working class. There are many ways a Biden Administration can start.
- Trump is being forced to give up his attempt to overturn the election. But his efforts to build an alternative reality around himself will continue.
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