Change to believe in: Obama’s clothes
By Clyde Haberman Published: November 14, 2008
NEW YORK: Two robbery suspects, hands cuffed behind them, were taken from a police station house in New York a few days ago. Like many young men, they wore baggy trousers. They wore them low, very low, so low that the beltless jeans of one suspect slid down almost to his knees.
Guilty or innocent, he looked ridiculous. President-elect Barack Obama, we’re willing to bet, would have agreed.
The first order of business for the new president will no doubt be to get America to hitch up its pants and give the economy a kick-start. It will be interesting to see if he can also get America to hitch up its pants, period. This is a matter of no small concern to New York, where changes in fashion mean jobs, reputations and – count on it – money.
Just before Election Day, Obama appeared on MTV and took a question about laws in some municipalities that ban a popular street look among young men who go around in low-slung pants that expose way more underwear than many of us care to see. Those ordinances, the candidate said, are “a waste of time.”
“Having said that,” he added, “brothers should pull up their pants. You are walking by your mother, your grandmother, your underwear is showing. What’s wrong with that? Come on.”
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The question now is whether as president he can bring about a change in urban fashion by sheer dint of example.
There is a persistent belief that President John F. Kennedy delivered a knockout blow to traditional hats by preferring to go hatless. In an earlier generation, Clark Gable supposedly devastated the men’s undershirt industry when he unbuttoned his shirt in the 1934 comedy “It Happened One Night” and revealed himself to be bare-chested. (Has anyone ever explored whether hitchhiking women of that era started flashing some thigh to stop cars, as Claudette Colbert did in that classic film?)
JFK as hat killer is dismissed as a myth by many fashion experts, who say that American men were abandoning fedoras and the like even before Kennedy took office in 1961. In fashion, said Anne Hollander, the author of “Sex and Suits” and other books on how we dress, “when you look more closely, there’s evidence that a thing happened before it took hold, and no single person was responsible.”
Having said that, to borrow from Obama, the new president may be able to set a well-tailored example that others will follow. “It could have an influence, indeed,” Hollander said. “Everybody’s looking at him all the time. That means they’re going to absorb it. Even unconsciously, they’re going to do it.”
Ruth Rubinstein, a sociology professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, in New York, agreed. “It’s very clear that what a president wears has an impact on the population,” she said.
Not everyone believes that words alone are enough. One doubter is Alan Flusser, a designer of menswear who has written several books on fashion. When it comes to Obama and the brotherhood of the sagging pants, “I don’t think his commenting on it one way or another is going to influence anybody,” Flusser said.
Then, too, said John Birmingham, editor in chief of DNR, a menswear trade publication, the prison look reflected in this style is past its prime. “A more cleaned-up and kind of preppy” fashion is ascendant, he said.
“One of the things fashion people say is that when you see something everywhere, that means it’s dead,” Birmingham said. Nonetheless, the low-slung look hangs on, even if the pants themselves do not. “I don’t mean to say that this is dead and you won’t see it anymore,” he said. “But you might see less of it and think, ‘I guess Obama had some influence here.”‘
Never sell a president (or his pants) short. With “slight refinements,” Flusser said of Obama, “he has the potential to raise the bar relative to stylishness.” Flusser suggested a simple white pocket square as a nice touch. In general, the president-elect “looks pretty comfortable in his clothes,” he said. “He looks like he’s wearing them as opposed to them wearing him.”
Maybe if he can get young men to do away with drooping pants, Obama can then take on the shrunken tailoring that has become popular – you know, the suits with sleeves that end well shy of the wrists and trouser legs that never make it to the ankles, pioneered by Thom Browne. Why anyone would spend a few thousand dollars to dress like Pee-wee Herman remains one of life’s mysteries.
The economy? Iraq? Afghanistan? Never mind them. Let’s see if the president-elect can persuade men to abandon the Thom Browne look. “That,” Birmingham said, “would be a test of his influence.”
