MICHELLE Obama, no doubts, is one of the top best-dressed women in the world today. Last year, she was voted among the top 10 dressed ladies because of her style and panache. She was a beauty to behold during the electioneering campaigns, making style statements with her fabrics and choice of colours.
In recent times, she has been helping out American designers by wearing their designs and giving them exposure. Her endorsements of these designers in the coming term are sure to be more powerful than ad spots.
Speaking on Mrs. Obama’s fashion, Sally Singer, Vogue’s Fashion News Director, said. “There is an immediate buzz in the fashion world. She motivates people to think about wearing something that looks beautiful, regardless of the price point.”
Michelle’s dress sense, is perhaps, the reason the fashion world is waiting to know what she is going to wear to the White House Inaugural Ball on Tuesday, January 20.
There’s been considerable debate over whether Mrs. Obama will showcase her trademark jewel colours for her inauguration dress or go for a classic white gown as favoured by Nancy Reagan and most famously, Jackie Kennedy.
After several sketches from designers such as Diane Von Furstenberg, Badgley Mishka, chado Raph Rucci, Betsey Johnson, Monique Lhuillier, Gtom, Zac Posen, Karl Lagerfeld, Christian Lacroix, Peter Som, Tracy Reese; designers such as Donna Karan and Thakoon Panichgul, who was in charge of the much maligned floral print dresses she wore the night of her husband's Democratic Party National Convention (DNC) acceptance speech and the first debate, expressed interest in designing a gown for her and a host of others on the Internet, Michelle is still to make a statement on who will design her dress.
Women's Wear Daily reports that some designers including Isaac Mizrahi, Carolina Herrera and Betsey Johnson, who have gone ahead to submit sketches of the dresses they'd like to design for Michelle for the Inauguration Ball.
Olowu, it is said, has clarity of vision that can build a brand — and an imaginative empathy that helps him design clothes women like to wear.
Some have even suggested that Mrs. Obama will decide to go with Maria Pinto, the Chicago designer behind the famous Purple Dress. There are, however, indications that Britain’s 2006 New Designer of the Year, Duro Oluwo, a Nigerian, will get the nod.
In his few years on the job, he has wooed the fashion world with his colour and breezy prints, and his flowered dresses falling to the mid-calf and ending in ruffled hemlines.
Trained as a lawyer, the Nigeria-born designer, whose mother is a Jamaican, launched his label in 2005, months before taking to the stage to collect his award from Laura Bailey.
And already he has the reputation for being the type of man who makes you want to wear his designs before you've even seen them.
"I think fashion should be joyful – it shouldn't dictate to women but it should invite them into the fantasy of the designer who is making them," he says.
First discovered by Vogue's Sally Singer and Julie Gilhart, of Barneys, Olowu is known for stunning fluid dresses, made from vintage fabrics that he finds all over the world as well as new prints that he's been designing himself, and incredibly desirable one-off, vintage-inspired accessories.
"I like to make clothes for women to feel good about themselves," he goes on. "And that they don't feel they'll see everywhere."
Olowu, who formerly designed clothes for the boutique on Ledbury Road that he owned with his ex-wife, is staying true to his design philosophy. "Good tailoring is very important to me," he says. "It is the basis of even the most fluid dress."
In the United State of America, the dresses worn by America First lady at the Inauguration is usually kept in Smithsonian Museum.
As the inauguration ceremony s going on in the US, Vendrika Fashion will showcase the replication of the dress that Michelle Obama wore on the election day alongside other eye-catching party and evening wear by 7pm on Tuesday, at D’Nu Grotto, Etim Inyang Crescent, Victoria Island, Lagos.
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