Ever since Michelle Obama departed for Europe with her husband,taking along a wardrobe of designer clothes and revealing a new hairdo,her meeting with Carla Sarkozy,the wife of the French president,had been anticipated as a fashion face-off between two stylish first ladies. Their meeting on Friday,at the Palais Rohan in Strasbourg,France,was not quite that. Indeed,Michelle and Carla looked remarkably similar,suggesting that both women know fashion and themselves pretty well. Each wore a coat with a soft bow at the neck and low-heeled shoes. Carlas gray lambskin coat was a Dior,while Michelles Jacquard silk coat was by the American designer Thakoon Panichgul,as was her short-sleeved fuchsia dress. Considering that both women have been compared to Jacqueline Kennedy,and that Carla is a pop singer and former model,people might have been surprised by the dull sobriety of Carlas outfit. But in the year since her marriage to President Nicolas Sarkozy,the French first lady has proved to be far more refined in her look than trendy. She chooses clothes with a relatively clean silhouette,like the Dior coat,or a black velvet Azzedine Alaïa gown she wore last week,or a navy Yves Saint Laurent dress she wore to an AIDS benefit in Paris in January. When she met Queen Elizabeth II last year,Carla was dressed top-to-toe in Dior,but in a way it was almost a costume of prim first lady elegance,and she has since toned that down and injected more,it seems,of herself. Despite their vast differences in background,that is a quality the two first ladies have in common. In terms of her appearance,Michelle seems to have exerted herself far more for the Group of 20 summit gathering and the NATO meeting than she did for the inauguration,perhaps because the stage is,in effect,bigger. Beginning with her mid-Atlantic outfit change on Tuesday,when she stepped off Air Force One in Essex,England,in a yellow Jason Wu dress,her wardrobe has been subjected to intense media scrutiny. She had a new hairdo,drawn back at the sides,and what appeared to be expertly applied makeup. In France,Michelle has shown a bit more flair and moxie with her choice of the ultra-fitted Thakoon dress,her hair again loose and soft. She is in France,after all,land of haute couture. The meeting between Michelle and Carla may not have been the showdown that fashion bloggers expected,but the American first lady has received the kind of coverage typically reserved for,well,supermodels. At times it has been gushy. The Web site for LExpress in Paris ran an article titled The Ten Commandments of Michelle Obamas Style. The first commandment was: Colour you will wear in excess. Soft or bright,Michelle knows that nothing suits her better . at the risk of other womens seeming very bland beside her. On a blog on LExpress,one post said that maybe she was being idealised. Non?
