Obama’s tan suit
First let me make myself perfectly clear: I don’t care one way or the other about what Obama’s tan suit signified, the one that has been causing such a ruckus. On the scale of things I have to criticize Obama for, it doesn’t even register.
But let me say, in defense of tan suits everywhere, that I like them. Tan suits conjure up a very specific memory for me, that of Manhattan in summertime.
Those who don’t live in New York or visit there may not know how sweltering it can be in the summer. Not as bad as DC, or cities south, but not far behind them. Humid and sultry, with skies that more often than not give off a colorless glare rather than a nice clear blue, and sidewalks on which the proverbial egg could be nicely cooked.
When I was a teenager in New York, I used to very much admire the sartorial splendor of the men on the street in summer, who in those days used to wear a great many suits. They made especially good watching the summer I worked for a midtown life insurance company. They looked good in their tan ones, and they looked good in their seersucker ones, and they just looked good.
I haven’t been there in the summer in a while, so I have no idea whether it has continued. But Obama is certainly dressed in that mode here:
Obama is a man with darkish skin. I am a woman with darkish skin. My experience dressing myself and looking in the mirror all these years has informed me that people like Obama and me have to be very very careful when we wear tan clothing, especially if the color is anywhere near the face. We can look washed out and sallow.
We have to be careful not to chose a tan shade that goes towards the yellow of the spectrum; best to keep it more taupe, which Obama has done here. That said, I find it best to generally avoid wearing tan clothes altogether, because they never are really flattering on me.
I sent a text to my daughter that this was all planned by Val Jarrett to distract the press.
It worked.
But I am glad they have a strategy on clothing.
What insurance company did you work for in midtown? I ask because, and even though it was a pretty big insurance company, it still is very often a small world, my aunt and my uncle worked for insurance companies in midtown. Both were executives, though right now, I am not sure which division/office they were in.
Cornhead: exactly.
And no clothes can hide what a tiny, small man he is.
He looks great in that suit imo. Almost makes him look like an alpha male.
Lee:
Equitable.
The best quote I read about it came from Iowahawk who said, “Apparently empty suits now come in khaki.”
And the girls in their summer dresses! http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/dresses.html
Michael Ledeen has a good article up at pjmedia on why Obama wants to pretend he doesn’t have a strategy for ISIS.
What’s the matter with the suit? I have one about the same color.
Reagan brought back the brown suit. Little Barry the celebrity president is just checking that style icon box.
I have only a black suit–for weddings and funerals. I do have a blue blazer and a brown-checked spot coat. I have enough khaki to dress entirely in khaki, and say “I am from Chrome, Jamaica; I am a mon ‘o Chrome, mon!”
It wasn’t his sartorial choice that caused the “ruckus”, such as it was. The ruckus was simply a cover for the incredible gaffe he made at the new conference. If you didn’t talk about the empty tan suit, you would have to explain the “lack of a strategy”.
Some may like tan suits or not, but Obama hasn’t usually worn them. The suit, and consequently Obama, looks out of place in that presser.
And as inconsequential as this issue is, I have the feeling that bashing Obama’s fashion sense may make more of an impression with his followers than any substantive argument conservatives could make.
A little mockery for having pedestrian taste in clothing goes a long way with the LIV crowd.
My aunt work for Equitable for forty years.
I’ll find out what department she was in. I really don’t recall. She worked for Equitable from the fifties to the early nineties. Wow.
” I am a woman with darkish skin. My experience dressing myself and looking in the mirror all these years has informed me that people like Obama and me have to be very very careful when we wear tan clothing, especially if the color is anywhere near the face. We can look washed out and sallow.”
I tend to agree, and especially think tan would clash badly with the apple.
It’s surprising he didn’t show up in a golf shirt and tennis shoes. Everyday is casual day for the laziest president in history.
Lee:
That is a strange coincidence.
However, I’m virtually positive I never met your aunt and she wouldn’t have met me. I worked for them for a summer, in a special unit where they were coding their old paper files for computers, and I worked for two men. I never even spoke to a woman there.
Barry spent his teen years in Honolulu.
Such business suits are absolutely upper crust there.
I thought he looked like a “Big 5” executive.
[ Five major ‘White’ firms dominated the commercial sector of the Islands for quite a while. Punahou was founded to educate the children of the Big 5 managerial elite. It’s where Barry grew up.]
And, rather than being ‘tan’ the suit in question would be termed ‘off white’ in the Islands. This is how the MSM distorts reality, small to large.
That’s his funeral suit.
For America.
Geez, discussing what the color of the messiah’s suit is akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. To be so easily distracted is a scarlet letter of shame. Who cares??? No one but the readers of people magazine at the checkout lane and the NYT.
Parker: “Who cares??? No one but the readers of people magazine at the checkout lane and the NYT.”
True, and sadly those people do vote!
parker: “Geez, discussing what the color of the messiah’s suit is akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”
My thoughts exactly. That this man of little experience and even less practical managerial ability can create a stir by wearing a summer suit shows how superficial our culture is. Of course, his words were of little consequence – Gee whiz, I don’t have a strategy. I don’t want to put the cart before the horse, etc. – the ink stained wretches had to find something else to write about to distract readers from the truth that the Emperor Has No Clothes. This is the stuff of Hollywood fan magazines.
parker and Charles:
I read People magazine at the checkout lane.
But I draw the line at buying it.
The late Jean Kerr wrote “I can’t wear beige. I AM beige.” (She wrote Please Don’t Eat the Daisies.)
NancyB:
I actually think very few human beings can wear beige successfully.
And most of them are redheads.