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Jill Biden offers a different model for first lady, our fashion critic writes. Jill Biden offers a different model for first lady, our fashion critic writes.
(14 days later)
The spouse of a political candidate often plays a crucial role in highlighting aspects of a candidate’s life that resonate with voters on a personal level.The spouse of a political candidate often plays a crucial role in highlighting aspects of a candidate’s life that resonate with voters on a personal level.
Dr. Jill Biden reinforced her husband’s folksiness and relatability, not only in the substance of her remarks, but through her fashion choices, according to The Times’s chief fashion critic, Vanessa Friedman.Dr. Jill Biden reinforced her husband’s folksiness and relatability, not only in the substance of her remarks, but through her fashion choices, according to The Times’s chief fashion critic, Vanessa Friedman.
Dr. Biden, she wrote, “will not use fashion as a shield against the world. She will not gird herself in glamour, or arm herself with gilded European brand names. She is certainly not a trophy sitting on a shelf.”Dr. Biden, she wrote, “will not use fashion as a shield against the world. She will not gird herself in glamour, or arm herself with gilded European brand names. She is certainly not a trophy sitting on a shelf.”
As the Democratic Party’s experiment in remote conventioning continued with Day 2 on Tuesday, Dr. Jill Biden brought the effort to present her husband, Joseph R. Biden Jr., as the anti-Trump in character and conviction to a personal close, and played her part in the drama. After all, if he is the presidential alternative, so she, too, is the current first lady’s.
First lady is an odd role, as many historians have pointed out: unelected, yet also crucial to fleshing out the humanity of a president, and the parts of a candidate that resonate with voters. That’s why the spouse gets a keynote during the convention, and also why traditionally so much attention paid to what she wears: why, for example, her clothes can end up in a museum, and why the first lady is sometimes treated like the first influencer. (Why, when it comes time for a first man, his clothes will matter, too.)
The first spouse is a key part of the image-making.