Topics: Books, Fashion, Michelle Obama, Politics, US News, Barack Obama
Michelle Obama has long been hailed as one of the United States' favourite First Ladies.
She took on the role of FLOTUS alongside her husband, Barack Obama, who was in office between 2009 to 2017, and during her time in the White House, she put together an endless array of fashion-forward looks.
And fashion is clearly a big passion of Michelle's, considering she's written a whole photo book titled The Look, which was just released today (5 November).
In the new book, which is certain to land a place on many people's coffee table stacks this year, Michelle opened up about the many different aspects of her personal style and about how she leveraged fashion to shine a light on causes she deemed most important, including education, military families and children's health.
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"I really thought about what I wanted to say with my fashion. I wanted to, you know, talk about inclusion, diversity, opening up opportunities, and fashion was one of those tools that allowed me to do that," she explained on Good Morning America.
"The designers that I chose -- there were young designers; there were women designers; there were also immigrant American designers."
Michelle said that when she chose the ensembles, she was keen to showcase the best designers and the diversity that 'makes America great' - something which could be interpreted as a response to current US President Donald Trump's 'Make America Great Again' slogan.
This has echoed throughout Trump's second term of presidency, which has since increased ICE raids, attacks on the LGBTQ+ community and concern around women's reproductive freedoms.
"I was able to show the world the outstanding qualities of people who come from different places, with different backgrounds, with different skin colours, from different genders and sexual orientations," the mother of two added.
Michelle - who chose a Taiwan-born, New York-based designer who at the time was in his early 20s and just starting his career to create her first Inaugural Ball gown in 2009 - carried on: "Excellence is not measured that way, and it is true in fashion and in law and in journalism and in research. Let us not forget that.
"And that was the point - to find the best designers, to give them a stage to show the world how great they were.
"That's what makes America great."
Reflecting on the current political climate in the States nearly a decade after leaving the White House, Michelle said, “When folks are facing tough economic times, when jobs are scarce, when opportunities seem to be less, [when] it's harder to get ahead in this economy, it’s easy to have somebody make you think it's somebody else's fault, you know?
"So let's blame the other."
"I think that's one of the things we struggle with, but when we look around at truly who has built this country, who keeps it moving, you know, it's all of us, and all of us is Black, brown, Puerto Rican, Mexican American, Italian, Irish, Haitian," she continued.
"That's the story of America, right? And it is the most true in fashion."
However, despite actively making such statements during her time in the White House, Michelle did admit that she hesitated to talk about fashion as First Lady due to concerns her choices would 'become a distraction'.
"During my eight years in the White House, although there was a lot of attention given to my fashion, my physical appearance, all of that, I made it a point to shy away from that conversation, because I was worried that it would become a distraction," she concluded, explaining why she's chosen now to finally open up about her passion for fasion all these years later.
