How Ikram Goldman became Michelle Obama's closest fashion adviser: Chicago Tribune

Quoted via Chicago Tribune:

Ikram fashion boutique is located on Chicago's gold coast at 873 North Rush Street.About a month before the presidential election, Ikram Goldman turned up in Paris wearing an oversize dress emblazoned with Barack Obama's image, created for Goldman by the cult Japanese label Undercover.

The week of the inaugural, Michelle Obama turned up in Washington wearing, in a more subtle way, Goldman's imprint, via designer dresses vetted through Goldman's boutique, Ikram, in Chicago.

A month past the inauguration, both women might have hoped the media glare on their relationship would dim. But the Obamas' first state dinner Sunday kindled another round of questions about her deep-purple sequin gown. (Some answers: It was designed by Peter Soronen and styled by Goldman with a Tom Binns necklace.) And at New York Fashion Week last week, curiosity greeted Goldman at every turn, with this simmering question: How did she earn a starring role in the first lady's wardrobe choices?Adding a shrill note to the discussion was a story in The New York Times just before the shows kicked off. Influential fashion critic Cathy Horyn and Eric Wilson quoted veteran designers as saying that Obama is excluding a wealth of talent by relying on a retailer as gatekeeper, and suggesting that Goldman is advancing her own interests too directly. The company director for Jason Wu, who designed Obama's inaugural gown and the dress she wears on the cover of March Vogue, told the Tribune that Wu is limiting his distribution to one store per city. In Chicago, that's Ikram.

Still, Goldman is not taking the bait to talk. more

Photo via michelleostyle.blogspot.com.