The dos and don’ts of the inauguration outfit

Given recent events on the inauguration scaffolding, Jill Biden may do well to wear a bullet-proof vest to watch her husband become the 46th President of the United States and be done with it. But Inauguration Day calls for some serious sartorial politicking and it seems unlikely Dr B will want to miss out. Long before Michelle sashayed her way to the 2013 ceremony in that Thom Browne coat, Thomas Carlyle spoke of the power of clothes in his 1834 Sartor Resartus: “Society is founded upon cloth” he said simply, and most women in the world would agree with him. Yet what the First Lady wears as she stands shivering next to the President in the DC winter is so much more than just cloth, it is the boundary between the First Lady and the social world, a medium for us to visualise the structures of power as it changes (gloved) hands.