A First Lady Style Showdown? Not Exactly: NYTimes

Quoted via NYTimes:

Ever since Michelle Obama departed for Europe with her husband, taking along a wardrobe of designer clothes and revealing a new hairdo, her meeting with Carla Sarkozy, the wife of the French president, has been anticipated as a fashion face-off between two stylish first ladies.

Their meeting today, at the Palais Rohan in Strasbourg, France, was not quite that. Indeed, Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Sarkozy looked remarkably similar, suggesting that both women know fashion — and themselves — pretty well. Each had on a coat with a soft bow at the neck and flat-heeled shoes. Mrs. Sarkozy’s gray lambskin coat was a Dior, while Mrs. Obama’s jacquard silk coat was by the American designer Thakoon Panichgul, as was her short-sleeved fuchsia dress.

Considering that both women have been compared to Jacqueline Kennedy, and that Mrs. Sarkozy is a pop singer and former model, people might have been surprised by the sobriety, the almost blandness, of her outfit. But in the year since her marriage to President Nicolas Sarkozy, the French first lady has proven to be far more refined in her look than trendy. more