I knew a little about fashion, but not a lot. As a working mother, I’d really been too busy to put much thought into what I wore. During the campaign, I’d done most of my shopping at a boutique in Chicago where I’d had the good fortune of meeting a young sales associate named Meredith Koop. Meredith, who’d been raised in St. Louis, was sharp and knowledgeable about different designers and had a playful sense of color and texture. After Barack’s election, I was able to persuade her to move to Washington and work with me as a personal aide and wardrobe stylist. Very quickly, she also became a trusted friend.
A couple of times a month, Meredith would roll several big racks of clothing into my dressing room in the residence, and we’d spend an hour or two trying things on, pairing outfits with whatever was on my schedule in the coming weeks. I paid for all my own clothes and accessories—with the exception of some items like the couture-level gowns I wore to formal events, which were lent to me by the designers and would later be donated to the National Archives, thus adhering to White House ethics guidelines. When it came to my choices, I tried to be somewhat unpredictable, to prevent anyone from ascribing any sort of message to what I wore. It was a thin line to walk. I was supposed to stand out without overshadowing others, to blend in but not fade away. As a black woman, too, I knew I’d be criticized if I was perceived as being showy and high end, and I’d be criticized also if I was too casual. So I mixed it up. I’d match a high-end Michael Kors skirt with a T-shirt from Gap. I wore something from Target one day and Diane von Furstenberg the next. I wanted to draw attention to and celebrate American designers, most especially those who were less established, even if it sometimes frustrated old-guard designers, including Oscar de la Renta, who was reportedly displeased that I wasn’t wearing his creations. For me, my choices were simply a way to use my curious relationship with the public gaze to boost a diverse set of up-and-comers.
Optics governed more or less everything in the political world, and I factored this into every outfit. It required time, thought, and money—more money than I’d spent on clothing ever before. It also required careful research by Meredith, particularly on foreign trips. She’d often spend hours making sure the designers, colors, and styles we chose paid proper respect to the people and countries we visited. Meredith also shopped for Sasha and Malia ahead of public events, which added to the overall expense, but they, too, had the gaze upon them. I sighed sometimes, watching Barack pull the same dark suit out of his closet and head off to work without even needing a comb. His biggest fashion consideration for a public moment was whether to have his suit jacket on or off. Tie or no tie?
We were careful, Meredith and I, to always be prepared. In my dressing room, I’d put on a new dress and then squat, lunge, and pinwheel my arms, just to be sure I could move. Anything too restrictive, I put back on the rack. When I traveled, I brought backup outfits, anticipating shifts in weather and schedule, not to mention nightmare scenarios involving spilled wine or broken zippers. I learned, too, that it was important to always, no matter what, pack a dress suitable for a funeral, because Barack sometimes got called with little notice to be there as soldiers, senators, and world leaders were laid to rest.
I came to depend heavily on Meredith but also equally on Johnny Wright, my fast-talking, hard-laughing hurricane of a hairdresser, and Carl Ray, my soft-spoken and meticulous makeup artist. Together, the three of them （dubbed by my larger team “the trifecta”） gave me the confidence I needed to step out in public each day, all of us knowing that a slipup would lead to a flurry of ridicule and nasty comments. I never expected to be someone who hired others to maintain my image, and at first the idea was discomfiting. But I quickly found out a truth that no one talks about: Today, virtually every woman in public life—politicians, celebrities, you name it—has some version of Meredith, Johnny, and Carl. It’s all but a requirement, a built-in fee for our societal double standard.
How had other First Ladies managed their hair, makeup, and wardrobe challenges? I had no idea. Several times over the course of that first year in the White House, I found myself picking up books either by or about previous First Ladies, but each time I’d lay them down again. I almost didn’t want to know what was the same and what was different about any of us.
I did, in September, have a pleasant overdue lunch with Hillary Clinton, the two of us sitting in the residence dining room. After his election and a little to my surprise, Barack had chosen Hillary as his secretary of state, both of them managing to set aside the battle wounds of the primary campaign and build a productive working relationship. She was candid with me about how she’d misjudged the country’s readiness to have a proactive professional woman in the role of First Lady. As First Lady of Arkansas, Hillary had kept her job as a law partner while also helping with her husband’s efforts to improve health care and education. Arriving in Washington with the same sort of desire and energy to contribute, though, she’d been roundly spurned, pilloried for taking on a policy role in the White House’s work on health-care reform. The message had been delivered with a resounding, brutal frankness: Voters had elected her husband and not her. First Ladies had no place in the West Wing. She’d tried to do too much too quickly, it seemed, and had run straight into a wall.
I myself tried to be mindful of that wall, learning from other First Ladies’ experience, taking care not to directly or overtly insert myself into West Wing business. I relied instead on my staff to communicate daily with Barack’s, exchanging advice, syncing our schedules, and reviewing every plan. The president’s advisers in my opinion could be overly fretful about appearances. At one point several years later, when I decided to get bangs cut into my hair, my staff would feel the need to first run the idea past Barack’s staff, just to make sure there wouldn’t be a problem.
With the economy in rough shape, Barack’s team was constantly guarding against any image coming out of the White House that might be seen as frivolous or light, given the somberness of the times. This didn’t always sit well with me. I knew from experience that even during hard times, maybe especially during hard times, it was still okay to laugh. For the sake of children, in particular, you had to find ways to have fun. On this front, my team had been wrangling with Barack’s communications staff over an idea I’d had to host a Halloween party for kids at the White House. The West Wing—particularly David Axelrod, now a senior adviser in the administration, and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs—thought it would be perceived as too showy, too costly, and could potentially alienate Barack from the public. “The optics are just bad” was how they put it. I disagreed, arguing that a Halloween party for local kids and military families who’d never seen the White House before was a perfectly appropriate use for a tiny slice of the Social Office’s entertaining budget.
Axe and Gibbs never fully consented, but at some point they stopped fighting us on it. At the end of October, to my great delight, a thousand-pound pumpkin sat on the White House lawn. A brass band of skeletons played jazz music, while a giant black spider descended from the North Portico. I stood in front of the White House, dressed as a leopard—in black pants, a spotted top, and a pair of cat ears on a headband—as Barack, who was never much of a costume guy even before optics mattered, stood next to me in a humdrum sweater. （Gibbs, to his credit, showed up dressed as Darth Vader, ready to have fun.） That night, we handed out bags of cookies, dried fruits, and M&M’s in a box emblazoned with the presidential seal as more than two thousand little princesses, grim reapers, pirates, superheroes, ghosts, and football players traipsed up the lawn to meet us. As far as I was concerned, the optics were just right.