Sometime during Barack’s campaign, people had begun paying attention to

my clothes. Or at least the media paid attention, which led fashion bloggers to
pay attention, which seemed then to provoke all manner of commentary across
the internet. I don’t know why this was, exactly—possibly because I’m tall and
unafraid of bold patterns—but so it seemed to be.

When I wore flats instead of heels, it got reported in the news. My pearls,
my belts, my cardigans, my off-the-rack dresses from J.Crew, my apparently
brave choice of white for an inaugural gown—all seemed to trigger a slew of
opinions and instant feedback. I wore a sleeveless aubergine dress to Barack’s
address to the joint session of Congress and a sleeveless black sheath dress for my
official White House photo, and suddenly my arms were making headlines. Late
in the summer of 2009, we went on a family trip in the Grand Canyon, and I was
lambasted for an apparent lack of dignity when I was photographed getting off
Air Force One (in 106-degree heat, I might add) dressed in a pair of shorts.

It seemed that my clothes mattered more to people than anything I had to
say. In London, I’d stepped offstage after having been moved to tears while
speaking to the girls at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School, only to learn that
the first question directed to one of my staffers by a reporter covering the event
had been “Who made her dress?”

This stuff got me down, but I tried to reframe it as an opportunity to learn,
to use what power I could find inside a situation I’d never have chosen for
myself. If people flipped through a magazine primarily to see the clothes I was
wearing, I hoped they’d also see the military spouse standing next to me or read
what I had to say about children’s health. When Vogue proposed putting me on
the cover of the magazine shortly after Barack was elected, my team had debated
whether it would make me seem frivolous or elitist during a time of economic
worry, but in the end we’d decided to go ahead with it. It mattered every time a
woman of color showed up on the cover of a magazine. Also, I insisted on
choosing my own outfits, wearing dresses by Jason Wu and Narciso Rodriguez, a
gifted Latino designer, for the photo shoot.

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