Teresa Heinz Kerry has presented herself to Americans as a multilingual free spirit, a woman with a taste for a 1970s-era Jacqueline Bisset coiffure and a habit of tossing a sweater over her shoulders, as if her political outings demanded no more of her than patio luncheons in Nantucket. Her gold tank watch rests loosely on her wrist; her favorable position on millennial-era cosmetic enhancements remains a matter of record. Were she to take up residence in the White House as first lady in a John Kerry administration, no one would expect her to fade into the chintz.
She is in many ways a contrast to Laura Bush, who has sought above all to look imperturbably well-kempt. After nearly four stressful years in the White House, Bush's smile remains dependably attractive, her hair neatly clipped and her neutral suits, one indistinguishable from the next, are as proper as schoolgirls' uniforms.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
And so another battle of sorts has intensified following the Democratic National Convention -- this one over the many contrasts in taste and appearance and comportment between the potential first ladies. It is a pageant that many might prefer did not exist, but which nonetheless occupies a corner of voters' minds.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
In the popular view, the scrutiny and fascination with the style of first ladies began with Jackie Kennedy, and redoubled with Nancy Reagan and Hillary Rodham Clinton. But a focus on fashion is not so exclusively modern a preoccupation, either by the electorate or by first ladies themselves.
Fashion memorably concerned a number of presidential wives who predate the mid-20th century, a few of whom wielded a distinct influence over the tastes of US women at a time when the celebrity culture's tentacles were not yet so all-entangling.
Kerry's look of vague aversion to the
constraints of political life, in fact, might call to mind Grace Goodhue Coolidge who, as the wife of Calvin Coolidge, who served as president from 1923 to 1929, arrived in Washington to observations that she "kept her wits at the end of her tongue." With her lean frame, the result of a passion for hiking and swimming, Coolidge was, in the opinion of the historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony, America's first ambassador of women's sportswear.
"It was the 1920s, Gertrude Ederle had swum the English Channel and there was this great sense of excitement about women and sports, and Grace Coolidge embodied this new athletic ethos," said Anthony, the author of several books about first ladies and life in the White House. Newsreels captured her in mountain gear at the couple's vacation home in the Black Hills of South Dakota. She adapted herself to flapper style in a manner so admired that she was awarded a gold locket by the couturier Charles Worth on behalf of the French garment industry.
Coolidge adored red and named her dog Rob Roy as a sly show of disapproval of prohibition. In the June 1927 issue of Vanity Fair, she was named to the magazine's Hall of Fame because, as the magazine said, "she is the first lady of the land and the wife of the President of the United States; because she is one of the best liked and most charming hostesses in Washington."
Few political wives, though, have ever commanded quite the sartorial attention that the country heaped upon Frances Folsom, who at the age of 22, on a June day in 1886, became the wife of former president Grover Cleveland, a man who was nearly three decades her senior.
As early as the 1870s, the press was tuning in to what women were wearing to presidential inaugurations. But the arrival of Cleveland created a new kind of frenzy about fashion. "The papers absolutely loved Frances Folsom," said Alden O'Brien, costume curator at the Museum of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Washington, "because she was so pretty and it was just so newsworthy and charming to have this incredibly young woman in the White House."
The press, to Cleveland's distaste, nicknamed her Frankie. Many women began shaving the backs of their necks in emulation of her close-cropped haircut. "People always say, `Oh, Jackie was an American princess,' but Frances Cleveland really was," Anthony said.
Although she had not granted her consent, Cleveland's image began to appear on a mind-boggling array of products from liver pills to women's undergarments. Her preference for shoulder-baring clothes managed to arouse the ire of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which petitioned her to dress more conservatively, saying that her style posed a threat to the chastity of young American women. Comparisons to Britney Spears do not seem out of place.
At one point during the Cleveland presidency, a gossip report declaring that Cleveland had abolished the bustle from her wardrobe knocked the fashion industry on its head. According to Presidential Wives: An Anecdotal History by Paul Boller Jr., when Cleveland read this fabricated item, she decided the rumor was not worth denying and stopped wearing bustles publicly.
Her affinity for the retail industry also showed itself in her habit of holding Saturday afternoon teas at the White House for department store clerks.
Going back even further in US history, Dolley Madison, whose travels to Europe gave her a taste for the look of classical imperialism, managed to popularize turbans for women when she returned home. Her own turbans were decorated with bird of paradise feathers.
And consider too, the fame of Julia Gardiner Tyler, second wife of President John Tyler who married him while he was in office in 1844. A socialite of New York and East Hampton, Tyler had been given the name the "Rose of Long Island" before she reached the White House.
Widely acknowledged to have been a great beauty, she had scandalized her family by appearing in an advertisement for a clothing merchant in 1839. A year later, she and her sister Margaret Gardiner toured Europe, in search of vibrant social life and wealthy husbands. A chronicle of the trip was published in the 1920s as Leaves from a Young Girl's Diary.
One suspects Heinz Kerry would have had quite a time with the Gardiner girls, and probably improved their Italian, French and Spanish -- and their Portuguese -- to boot.
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