Michelle Obama's status as a style icon is seen as a mixed blessing for the fashion trade: Telegraph UK

Quoted via Telegraph UK:

Designers, PRs and media commentators are united in the view that Mrs Obama has reignited popular interest in the fashion industry and given valuable publicity to previously obscure young American designers, like Mr Wu and Isabel Toledo, who designed Mrs Obama's yellow inauguration day wear. Clothes by Maria Pinto have flown off the shelves after Mrs Obama wore them during television appearances and on the campaign trail.

But there is also concern that the First Lady's determination to pick her own clothes, and mix expensive designer fare with high street brands like J. Crew (a mix and match approach on display in the Vogue photo shoot), does no favours to the established top end designers who expect women to pay thousands for a single outfit.

And beneath it all runs the fault line which informs everything the Obama family do in the public eye, the thorny issue of race. Put simply, many in the fashion trade are struggling to come to terms with a black woman as America's leading style icon. more