Kamala Harris’ Tan Suit Surprise

Vanessa Friedman analyses the ensemble chosen for Kamala Harris’ unexpected appearance at the Democratic National Concention.

When Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, took the stage on Monday night (local time) on Day 1 of the Democratic National Convention, it was surprising for two reasons.

First, that she had popped up to speak at all, rather than simply waiting her official turn to accept her party’s official nomination on Thursday and taking her seat as the guest of honour alongside her vice-presidential pick, Gov. Tim Walz, and their families.

And second, that she had popped up to speak (albeit briefly, and in praise of President Joe Biden) while wearing a tan suit.

A tan suit!

After all, there are few garments less likely to show up at the public performances that are the major party presidential conventions. The usual dress code is one of straightforward red, white and blue: suits and ties, dresses, skirt suits. The point is patriotism in the most obvious sense.

The last time a tan suit made political waves, it was also late August, and the person wearing it was President Barack Obama. The occasion was a news conference on Iraq and Syria, but the response from a large swath of the watching public was shock! horror! at the outfit. Peter King, the Republican member of Congress from New York, said he thought “the suit was a metaphor for his lack of seriousness”. Lou Dobbs of Fox called it “unpresidential”. It was such a sticky topic that jokes about the choice became part of Obama’s repertoire. They also became part of the late-night arsenal.

None of which could have escaped Harris, for whom every detail of the most important convention of her political life will have been choreographed. If she was picking up the tan suit baton and running with it, there was most likely a reason.

Not surprisingly, commentators on social media jumped on the choice – the general interpretation being that Harris was subtly poking fun at past conservative horror over the tan suit. That she was using an otherwise conservative-seeming pantsuit to quietly underscore the brat side of her character.

“I yelled and then had to explain to my kid why the tan suit was an expert-level choice for her,” another wrote.

The suggestion that the suit, which came from the French label Chloé, designed by Chemena Kamali, whose gown Harris wore to the state dinner for Kenya, was a dig at her opponents may or may not be true, but it bolsters the narrative around Harris’ personality, her facility with memes and her general pop culture cred. It also serves to connect her historic candidacy – the first Black woman to become a major party nominee for president, the first woman of South Asian descent – to that of Obama, another historic figure.

And it worked as a sort of curtain-raiser and tone-setter for the convention. Harris needs to pace herself – to build to the moment of her acceptance speech – and wearing a tan suit was both a fairly innocuous opening choice and a sartorial next-stage moment; a break with the conventions of conventions. A choice that said something about a focus on individual stories, rather than group flag think.

Harris was not the only speaker on Day 1 to take a personal approach to image-making. Hillary Clinton’s cream tweed jacket and white trousers spoke directly to her own historic acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in 2016, when she wore a white pantsuit as a nod to the suffragist movement and started a movement. Jill Biden last wore her gunmetal blue sequin Ralph Lauren dress in 2022 for a White House event named in honour of her husband’s favourite line from poet Seamus Heaney, one he has repeated multiple times throughout his presidency: “when hope and history rhyme.”

Peggy Flanagan, the lieutenant governor of Minnesota and the co-chair of the convention, who will become the first female Native American governor if Harris and Walz win the election, wore a dress and jacket by Jamie Okuma, an Indigenous designer. And Jasmine Crockett, the representative from Texas who got into a verbal spat over appearance with Marjorie Taylor Greene during a committee meeting, showed up in an unapologetic black pantsuit piped in white, with a big brooch on the lapel.

None of the looks were standard political costumery. All of them acted as a frame and form of self-expression for the people involved. The result was a little chaotic and kind of fun; a departure from the norm – and a contrast from the red, white and blue dressing that had been the standard at the Republican convention in July. As for Harris, the tan suit served one final purpose. Every time the camera panned to her sitting in her box smiling and waving at the crowd and the speakers, it triggered another frenzy of speculation about the choice. It was simply one more tool to centre her in the conversation as a strategist without having to say another word.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Vanessa Friedman

©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES

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