Loosening His Tie (Sort Of)

By CATHY HORYN

Charles Dharapak/Associated Press

President-elect Obama, center, takes his daughter Malia, and Sasha, to school in Chicago on Monday.

Several things happened when Mr. Obama surrendered, if briefly, the formality of his suit. You realized what a celebrity he is. After all, we know celebrities not so much by what they wear on the red carpet as by what they wear at the airport or to run an errand: a baseball cap and some version of a track suit.

The only thing missing from photos of Mr. Obama entering his SUV is a Starbucks in hand.

Americans like to see their presidents being athletic, or at least game. On a man of his age and build, almost any type of casual attire would convey this impression. But Mr. Obama’s off-duty clothes tells us he doesn’t yet feel entirely free to relax and that, unlike John F. Kennedy in his sailing shorts or Ronald Reagan in his ranch clothes, he doesn’t have an informal style that can be endowed with meaning.

Considering the choices and forms of expressions available to him, Tom Kalenderian, the men’s wear fashion director at Barneys New York, said, “The casual thing is a bit of a disappointment.”

Mr. Obama sometimes wears jeans, as he did for a rally on Oct. 28, but his jeans are the loose, jingle-the-change-in-your-pocket type. He belts them at the waist, and when he wears them with white sneakers and a windbreaker, one could almost say he had stolen the look from Jerry Seinfeld’s character on the television series.

Mr. Seinfeld was unaware of the steal. “I don’t know that I can make a proprietary claim to that look,” Mr. Seinfeld said doubtfully. But if Mr. Obama favors it, he added, “I’m happy to have the association.”

Doug Mills/The New York Times

BREEZY The favored windbreaker.

Obama had relaxed his look since the election and that what he wears is really driven by his schedule. And yet because his campaign was so tightly controlled in terms of self-presentation, it is hard to look at recent images of a more casual Mr. Obama without seeing the same cautious man. However cool and informal a black windbreaker may look, it still represents a safe, formal choice.

Andrew Ross, a professor and chairman of the department of social and cultural analysis at New York University, points out that informality in presidents isn’t just about looking relaxed. “It’s intended to convey clear-cut messages,” Mr. Ross said. He cited the examples of Jimmy Carter, who wore a cardigan when he asked Americans to turn down their thermostats and save energy; and Mr. Reagan, whose khakis and jeans projected a frontier mentality that jibed with his view of big government.

“It remains a fact that white males can dress down much more easily than women and minorities,” he said. That’s because, unlike white males, their formal rights have never been secure. Hence they lean toward more formal attire.

Referring to casual dress, he added: “There are just too many traps involving black male stereotypes that Obama could fall into. He’s likely to be on guard.”

Just imagine how easy it would be for a president, who happens to have a model’s coat-hanger body, to suddenly look too cool just by his choice of sunglasses.

In a way, his suits say more about him.

“He likes to keep it simple,” said Jim Moore, the creative director of GQ, who last year did a cover shoot with Mr. Obama, adding that he could probably wear a Size 40 rather than a 42. Though it is possible the larger size lends Mr. Obama a more mature cast.

To Mr. Kalenderian, there is a great deal in the consistency and plainness of Mr. Obama’s two-button, American-made suits that says nonmaterialistic. “He’s not about belonging to someone else,” he said. “It’s about the lack of branding.”

Given this fairly esoteric approach to dressing, as well as the absolute consistency and almost nostalgic allusions to ’60s formality, Mr. Kalenderian said he feels sure that Mr. Obama is the architect of his own look, and that he has probably “said no to 99 suggestions.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/fashion/13ROW.html