Why Michelle Obama Is Not the Next Jackie O: Newsweek

Quoted via Newsweek:

“A new big O is ascending on the fashion scene,” wrote Wendy Donahue in her style column for the Chicago Tribune less than a week after voters sent her hometown girl, Michelle Obama, to the White House with her husband. Like many fellow fashionistas, Donahue is rushing to cram Obama’s 5-foot-11-inch frame into the mold left by her timeless predecessor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The trouble, historians say, is that it’s a lousy fit.

Obama’s bold wardrobe choices have tapped into a yearning among style writers for the bygone days of Jackie’s youthful elegance. The New York Post has already christened the Obama White House “Bamelot,” playing on the Kennedys’ “Camelot” mythology. But aside from youth, beauty and little kids running around—plus that prominent “O”—what exactly do the two have in common? Next to nothing. “There seems to be this moving train that simply insists that Mrs. Obama is the new Mrs. Kennedy,” says Carl Anthony, historian for the National First Ladies’ Library, who has been fielding calls from reporters eager to connect the dots. But Anthony thinks they’re worlds apart. more