The Founding Fathers wanted to separate the center of government from the center of commerce. So after contentious discussions it was decided to move the capital from New York to a swamp on the Potomac River.
And in some ways, it is still a swamp. Purely in terms of fashion, Washington has been a disaster.
We are talking about subway cars full of women of color in tan hose and shapeless blazers whose main objective seems to be mixed – often in blends of polyester.
crazy peggy noonan doesnt like obama
All the Hoopla all men of Chicago and its elegant natural elegance wife has raised expectations that Obama, among other things, generate interest worldwide in a cool, unhurried style rooted in the individual rather than a designer dictates.
But one thing is to influence the world and to change Washington.
Has been a city of fashion for not so long that even the regular infusions of the fashion movement for true believers in the new administrations have not done a crossover style, culture and government in the way of Paris, London , Moscow, Buenos Aires or Santiago de Chile.
“Washington has not cared about the women of fashion,” says Peggy Noonan, a successful author and speechwriter for former President Reagan. “They thought that if you care about as expected, is proof that you are very serious about politics and power.” Noonan, 58, described the woman living there at the time, “men with small breasts.”
After surviving years of square-shouldered dresses and big bows, Noonan moved to the fashion-focused New York, landing in the heart of this fabulous, something frivolous. ”
But she acknowledges that things are improving in the capital of our country.
Washington is a resolution to keep up with us, “said Noonan, who now writes a column for the Wall Street Journal.” They do a much better job than they used, and God bless. ”
You could say that if Washington Mid-Atlantic Blahs syndrome is decreasing.
There are no sales and a sample of H & M or Zara in the way that every corner in New York or Los Angeles, making fashion accessible moment to the masses. But everything on the Internet, and new stores of the big names like Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Jimmy Choo, as well as Clothiers elegant Italian men in the DC suburbs as Chevy Chase and Bethesda, Md.
“Everyone has access to everything now,” says Kate Betts, director of Time Style & Design magazine. Unlike New York and Los Angeles, however, Washington has not developed a distinctive image, since it is not a fashion or design to inspire people, Betts said.
“I’m trying to remember when I went to the White House correspondents dinner what people wore,” said Betts, paused thoughtfully. “But I can not, because there is an indelible image.”
Betts, 44, thinks that, like Princess Diana, Michelle Obama is “benefit of women everywhere – and, yes, even in Washington – because she is not chasing fashion that radiates confidence, but with his style staff.
“It takes a lot of confidence to use and prints in color and accessories to the way we do,” he says.
Betts also believes that the next first lady in ending a determination to do so unimportant DC. “There is a new energy around fashion because of it.”
This new energy is not only about Michelle Obama. Obama the ‘inner circle includes a select group of women, many African American, some from Chicago, who are turning heads in the capital.
Beth Dozoretz, a well-along Washington hostess and Democratic fund was delighted at a recent match the original style of the Obama-ites as social secretary and adviser Valerie Jarrett Desiree Rogers.
“I love that these beautiful women are so fabulous,” says Dozoretz, 57.
However, the former New Yorker and apparel industry executive has been found in Washington to release the same reason you do not have to look fabulous all the time, how do the power elite in New York.
“You can wear a dress or carry a 10-fold garment 10 years and nobody will care,” says Dozoretz, with a personal shopper in New York but also shops for her in Washington.
What is important, he adds, is that you put on your clothes without too much attitude. “The humility, integrity and participation are the things that really matter here,” he says. “Fashion is a sidebar, not the substance.”
This probably explains why women – the secretaries of the Cabinet of Ministers office – still feel compelled to dress conservatively for success. Successive Secretaries of State (with the exception of Colin Powell) have tried to make a fashion statement. However, Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, and now contender Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton have appeared much more glamorous that spreads in the magazine Vogue has never managed to travel the world for the United States.
The problem is not that Washington does not care about women or trying to be smart. They are often simply too conservative, said Debra Lee, the glamorous president and CEO of Black Entertainment Television, based in DC
When Lee, 54, first moved to the capital after the Harvard Law School in 1980 and went to work for a white-shoe lawyers, was careful not to make a statement with their teams, but he likes to follow fashion. She wanted to make partner, and the high style is not in the equation. But joining BET in 1986 as Vice President and Corporate Counsel released his concern of what others thought of their teams.
However, she notes that in Washington after leaving New York or Los Angeles, which packs slightly edgier clothes.
“I still have a sense of what is too far,” said Lee, wearing a white leather skirt and taupe patent leather shoes to TV critics a conference last week in LA
A friend of Obama, Lee bought a single track for the opening weekend – a fur coat.
“I imagine this will be the only one that nobody really sees me in,” he says. “And I’m going to be hot.”
Driving on Connecticut Avenue a frigid morning last week, Ainsley Perrien, 48, a private investigator in Washington, spotted a group of packages for women.
“Oh, my God, it seems a ‘thoroughly modern Millie” and the rest seem to refrigerators, “she blurted into his cellphone.
Perrien moved to Washington, New Orleans 25 years ago to attend college and believes that the capital remains a haven where new sartorial transplants feel the need to dispose of their individuality.
“I call the syndrome of Lord & Taylor,” said Perrien, a small woman dressed in a budget. “People come here and want to see like everybody else, so it suits conservative use of Lord & Taylor.”
Noonan, meanwhile, looks forward to a new beginning in the first state dinner at the White House Obama: “Obama will walk into a beautiful tux and Michelle is a beautiful Oscar de la Renta or Carolina Herrera, who was so tall and beautiful and dignified, and surprise the world and be a sweet moment. ”
But then rocked “the fashion in Washington” was to be an oxymoron?