Obama-wear: are you avoiding the middle-aged style traps the former president fell in to?
It’s time to repeal Obamawear. The 44th president of the United States, seen as a paragon of understated cool in his dress sense as in his style of government, blotted his sartorial copybook this week.
On a visit to Washington’s National Gallery with his ever-immaculate wife Michelle, Barack Obama overdid the out-of-Oval-office look in a leather (or was it pleather?) jacket paired with dark wash jeans, brown lace-ups, a grey shirt unbuttoned to expose a vee of white t-shirt, shades and a natty little floral tote. “I’M FINE,” the outfit screamed. “I’M ON HOLIDAY FOREVER NOW. I DON’T HAVE A CARE WHILE THE WORLD GOES UP IN FLAMES.” Or I want to bring back Starsky and Hutch.
No man should wear leather over the age of 50, as the 55-year-old Chicagoan should have learned from his predecessors
Where to start? No man should wear leather over the age of 50, as the 55-year-old Chicagoan should have learned from his predecessors George W Bush and Bill Clinton (though at least he spared us the flying jackets those notoriously unmilitary types insisted on sporting). The shoes are a too-calculated attempt to add gravitas to an ensemble he’s too old for.
The rather camp tote is a blunt signifier of nonchalance while the chunky belt buckle, contradictorily, is the sort of thing middle-aged men wear to big up their virility. The t-shirt (or was it, gulp, a vest?) strikes a further, false, old-mannish note: if it’s cold, man, do up your buttons! The shades, at least, are good. And, as always, the salt-and-pepper hair.
But with this outfit, and with the stuff he wore on holiday with Richard Branson on Necker – that backwards baseball cap, those girly little backless slippers, those action-man sleeveless surfing vests – we have to acknowledge that Obama has fallen from his style pedestal.
This is a shame, as his position should have been buttressed by the screaming vulgarity of his successor, Donald Trump, whose saprophytic hair, angrily red, crotch-brushing ties and tendency to spray his rooms and his wives in gold suggest a deep insecurity.
But Obama has faced the conundrum of many men in midlife: what to do once you are freed from the safe uniform of the workplace suit. Slender and loose limbed, he was fine in a natty two piece, a fashion plate straight out of GQ. He pulled off the tieless look, as when he and daughter Malia met the cast of Broadway show The Price last month. And he was equally at home in the tie-plus-rolled-up- shirtsleeves combo that characterised his campaign speeches and his bromance with the more buttoned-up Joe Biden.
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When a man begins to reflect on his achievements – and being the first black, two-term US president is definitely up there among life goals – he feels he owes himself something. He wants to relax and yearns for the carefree informalities of youth. This is payback – he thinks, as he slips on a pair of mid-calf cargo pants – for all those years when I had to dress immaculately, smile the smile and talk the talk. It is a dangerous mental stage for men that, at its worst, results in the sort of retarded juvenile wardrobe of the Top Gear team. Indeed, it is the sartorial equivalent of wanting to buy a sports car and trade in your 50-year-old wife for two 24-year-olds.
I’m not excusing myself here. I was cheerfully laughing at the Obama photos during the interval at the Old Vic theatre when I realised I was wearing black Levi’s, a zip-up hoodie, a polka-dot scarf and a fluorescent silver cycling jacket. I am five years younger than Barack Obama and a lot less slim. My wardrobe is full of teenage leather jackets, amusing hats and a white silk suit I swear I will one day get into again.
