Last night’s Biden–Harris victory celebration in Wilmington, Delaware, was a great night for America—and for American fashion. In their first speeches as president-elect and vice president-elect, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris sought to heal the divisions that have defined the last four years in U.S. politics. And it is notable that the Carolina Herrera suffragette white suit Harris wore to deliver that message, as well as the Oscar de la Renta asymmetrical floral dress worn by future First Lady Jill Biden, are both from immigrant-founded American fashion labels that have long dressed First Ladies on both sides of the political aisle.
In her historic remarks as the first woman elected vice president, Harris recalled how her late mother, an Indian immigrant, “believed so deeply in an America where a moment like this is possible, and so I am thinking about her and about the generations of women, Black women, Asian, white, Latina, Native American women—who throughout our nation’s history have paved the way for this moment tonight—women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality and liberty and justice for all.”
Harris’s peak lapel suit, from Carolina Herrera creative director Wes Gordon’s resort 2021 collection, is by a label whose Venezuela-born eponymous founder proudly dressed First Ladies regardless of their political affiliation. During her nearly four-decade career (she retired in 2018), Herrera created clothes for Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, Michelle Obama, and, yes, Melania Trump.
Jill Biden’s embroidered midi dress is from the Oscar de la Renta resort 2020 collection co-designed by Laura Kim, who was raised in Korea and Canada, and Fernando Garcia, who spent his childhood in the Dominican Republic and Spain. They carry on the house’s late Dominican-born founder Oscar de la Renta’s relationship to the White House, which stretched all the way from Jackie Kennedy in 1962 to Michelle Obama shortly before his death in 2014. De la Renta supported his friend Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and was also close with Nancy Reagan and Laura Bush.
From the moment Michelle Obama stepped out in a red-and-black Narciso Rodriguez dress on the night that Barack Obama won his first presidential election in 2008, she began what would become a trademark of her style: supporting American talent, and in particular, designers of color. In doing so, she showed both the quiet power of fashion to speak volumes about our beliefs and created an unprecedented amount of value for the labels she chose to wear as First Lady.
By the looks of it, at a moment when the American fashion industry has been hit hard by the ongoing COVID-19 health crisis, it has found two major cheerleaders in our first-ever female vice president-elect and future First Lady. Biden’s dress sold out on The Outnet overnight.
