Dressed to Impress

Since her arrival in India,Michelle Obama,America’s First Lady,has been seen sporting rather conservative outfits,with longer hemlines and more relaxed silhouettes. While she stuck to her fashion doctrine of sporting labels of lesser-known designers,at the official dinner hosted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday,Mrs Obama finally obliged Indian fashionistas by wearing something with an ethnic touch.

She teamed her all-black outfit with a gorgeous zardosi-embroidered jacket and a tasseled neckpiece,the latter,according to sources,from the autumn-winter 2010 Art Deco collection of New York-based accessory designer Ranjana Khan. Incidentally Ranjana is the wife of celebrated Indian-American fashion designer Naeem Khan,whose designs have found favour with Mrs Obama even earlier,most notably during the first state dinner the Obamas hosted at the White House in 2009 in honour of Singh and his wife Gursharan Kaur. In fact,the jacket donned by Mrs Obama at the dinner on Sunday too,might well have come from Naeem’s collection,although there is no confirmation on that yet. The 46-year-old First Lady is known to use her sartorial sensibility to make political statements. She usually wears outfits that have a cultural context to the country she is visiting— in July 2009,during her meeting with the Pope,for instance,she wore a design by well-known Italian label Moschino— and is known to have a wardrobe which teams up affordable brands with expensive couture wear.

In her maiden visit to the country,she has stuck to an understated look,but has not worn any Indian designer label so far. During her visit to the Humayun’s Tomb,the First Lady wore a turquoise blue dress by designer Peter Som and,in Mumbai,she wore designs by lesser-known pret labels like J Crew,teaming them with necklaces and brooches by designer label Erickson Beamon.