Episode 6: Trendsetters

Courtney Caudle Travers discusses public and media expectations that position first ladies as trendsetters and ideals of femininity.

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TRANSCRIPT

Teri Finneman: Eleanor. Dolley. Mamie. Jackie. They were the nation’s original influencers. Some were fearless, some were fragile. All left their mark on the nation’s history. In this podcast, we'll reflect on the fascinating legacies of the women forever tied to the White House. I'm your host, Teri Finneman, a journalism historian who studies media portrayals of first ladies with production editing by Bella Koscal. This is the First Ladies podcast.

Every time I go to the Smithsonian, there are always massive crowds packed into the exhibit featuring first ladies’ dresses. What first ladies wear often stands in for public perceptions of who they are. From Michelle Obama's J.Crew fashion to Nancy Reagan's signature red, from Jacqueline Kennedy's elegance and pillbox hats to Mamie Eisenhower's bangs and love for bubblegum pink, first ladies have used fashion as a means of communicating the first lady position. In doing so, they have emerged as trendsetters in their respective moments.

 Our guest today, Courtney Travers, wrote all about this in her book chapter, “First Ladies as Trendsetters.” Courtney, welcome to the show. Why did you become interested in studying first ladies?

Courtney Travers (1:31): I actually became interested in studying first ladies by looking at Jacqueline Kennedy. I thought that she was fascinating as a first lady and then her enduring celebrity after John Kennedy's assassination was really interesting to me, so I was interested in the kind of visual role she played in establishing our understanding of the Kennedy administration and its presidential legacy.

Teri Finneman: Your chapter is about first ladies as trendsetters. First of all, we should probably discuss how do you define trendsetter and what's the history behind the concept?

Courtney Travers (2:08): Sure. Trendsetter as a term actually doesn't come about until about 1960 in British magazine culture. But, of course, trendsetters existed long before 1960. So, I really think about trendsetting or trendsetters as being people who influence our visual or aesthetic norms in a given moment. Often, they're circulated as celebrities, and again, they're circulated in highly visual manners, right? So, through dress, through appearance, and those things help establish norms of femininity for us.

Teri Finneman: Fashion and first ladies, or writing about how they look, has generated problematic news coverage in the past. There are frequent discussions, right, about the overemphasis of appearance with women in politics when men aren't held to that same standard, but you make an interesting point that a lot of these women came from eras where women were expected to be seen and not heard. So, fashion actually gave them an opportunity to otherwise be heard. I'm interested to hear more on your thoughts on this.

Courtney Travers (3:18): Absolutely. I think for a long time, you know, and especially in the 19th century where we see this real cult of domesticity, where we see these ideals around true womanhood and women being expected to be pious and pure and domestic and submissive, the visual becomes a way that women can speak and still enact “appropriate femininity.” So, I think that many first ladies have taken advantage of this trendsetting role and have taken advantage of the fact that their images are going to circulate anyway, so might as well speak through them.

Teri Finneman: Let's move into discussing some specific first ladies. Dolley Madison was famous for her headwear with the turbans that she wore. Discuss not only her fashion style, but also how she was a trendsetter in other ways by starting a number of traditions in the White House.

Courtney Travers (4:10): Sure. So, Dolley Madison is our first first lady to hold an inaugural ball, and as you mentioned, the turban becomes this trademark moment of her style. Most of the images that we see of Dolley Madison show her wearing a turban, and she does this at the inaugural ball, you know, I argue in the chapter for a few key reasons. The first is, it's the first time that she is establishing a visual aesthetic that is different from the English crown. So, how can we represent American democracy visually, but also in a formal way? And Madison does this by, of course, skewing the crown for the turban, which has become popular in French fashion in this moment, and she establishes a lot of our norms for the inaugural ballgown dress.

(5:05): It's off-white for her, it's low-cut, it has a long train, so it's actually more formal than American eveningwear in the moment, but its fabric and its lack of ornament is simpler than the European silhouettes that are similar to it. So, she offers us the first look at a kind of successful mediation of like an elevated American aesthetic that is still not as formal as the courtly wear in Europe.

Teri Finneman: I'm excited to talk about the next first ladies because it's mind blowing to think they were both in their twenties when they served as first lady: Julia Tyler and Frances Cleveland. Julia married the widowed John Tyler in 1844 and only served as first lady for eight months, but what can you tell us about her as a trendsetter?

Courtney Travers (5:58): Yes, so Tyler comes from an established, elite New York background. She's 24 when she becomes first lady, and she already is part of this kind of aristocratic society. So, upon her marriage to John Tyler, she permits an engraving of herself to be mass produced and sold. She befriends a Washington Post reporter who writes sort of breathless stories about her countenance and, actually, some scholars think that some of those stories were written by her brother as a kind of like in-house press release almost. She sits for a photograph, although that photograph’s not disseminated in the moment. We don't discover it until the 1980s.

(6:44): So, Tyler here, given her historical period, is less concerned with differentiating the American presidency from the English crown, and instead, she really introduces back into the presidency a sense of European pageantry, so she is responsible for the playing of “Hail to the Chief” upon presidential entrance. She also creates more distance in presidential reception of visitors. She's really engaged in, I think, this rhetorical process that we call mystification, which is where rhetors distance themselves to gain a kind of authority, and she wanted the presidency to feel more elevated. So, that is really her, I think, legacy as a trendsetter in the role.

Teri Finneman (7:32): Then moving on to Frances, it's so unfortunate that people today don't know anything about her because she was, as you also know, so to speak, an Instagram influencer before there was Instagram. She was an enormous celebrity in her day, marrying Grover in the White House after he became president and then serving two separate terms as first lady. Let's talk about the public obsession with her.

Courtney Travers: Sure, that begins really upon her marriage in the White House, which of course is the only, like, presidential marriage in the White House, and Cleveland is our youngest first lady. She's 22 years old and when they are planning the wedding in the White House, reporters are sort of running reports every day about, you know, the cake has arrived, gifts are arriving, and even though the press isn't invited in, there's this kind of media frenzy around this wedding in the White House. And then once she becomes first lady, a lot of the weekly newspapers at the moment, like Harper's, are running her image on the cover or showcasing her doing ordinary things, you know, it sort of reminds me of the early 2000s when Us Weekly magazine would, you know, post photographs of “Stars: They're just like us.” So, it would show Cleveland riding on a train or just doing something that other people are doing.

(8:52): But of course, it's Cleveland doing it, so it's important to see. And so, women copied her hairstyle, her clothing. She sort of famously bared her shoulders in her gowns, even though the Women's Temperance Union asks if she will not do that. She continues to do that, and so she wears kind of off-the-shoulder gowns. Her likeness was on ashtrays and calendars, and so she really becomes circulated as a celebrity in a way that signifies a lot about what's happening in mass culture in that moment.

Teri Finneman: Moving on to the 1950s, it's so fascinating to discuss Mamie Eisenhower in the trendsetter chapter. A point that you make that I really love is that when we think about trendsetters or celebrities, we tend to think about youth and beauty, which isn't really fair. Mamie, who was in her 50s and 60s as first lady, had a different kind of trendsetting appeal. Talk about that.

Courtney Travers (9:49): She did! In the 1950s, suburban culture was really being idealized, particularly in magazines of the moment, and as one scholar Karal Ann Marling writes, Mamie Eisenhower becomes a mediation between Paris and Levittown. So, she touts her department store finds, she has a signature color, “Mamie Pink,” which is the sort of bubblegum color, and she has fun with fashion. She says that she likes girlish clothes. She likes sparkle and ornament. She really is exemplifying this culture of choice, you know, like I get to choose to put as many embellishments as possible on my gowns and to make things shiny and pretty and flouncy and fun. And so, we know her for her bangs, those short bangs that were near the top of her forehead. That hairstyle becomes popular in the Levittowns across America.

(10:47): [Her] style is really accessible, so people feel like they can relate to it. They can buy copies of it easily. They can maybe even buy the same thing, right? She's getting this off 7th Avenue in a department store. So, she's really providing us, I think, a visual aesthetic that is accessible, that is fun, and that I think is her trendsetting appeal in this moment.

Teri Finneman: Along this same kind of line related to first ladies in their 60s, you write that Nancy Reagan rejected ageist assumptions about who should wear what and at what age. What interested you about her trendsetting strategy?

Courtney Travers (11:24): I loved that Nancy Reagan never shied away from admitting that she loved fashion. You know, first ladies historically have gotten in trouble for liking fashion or for paying attention to it, even though, of course, it's an expectation that we have of the role that first ladies appear “appropriate” in the role and dress is a lot of the way that we determine some of that. But Nancy Reagan says, “I like fashion. I like to ensure that my dress fits a particular occasion,” and so she also develops her own kind of signature color, right, “Nancy Red,” which she wears often. And even though press is giving her negative coverage concerning, you know, how much she spends on clothing, she sort of famously at the Gridiron Club does a little tongue-in-cheek dance, you know, for reporters to kind of push back on that a little bit and to establish really that fashion, for her and for the position, is important. It also generated positive press coverage for her, so that was helpful.

Teri Finneman (12:39): Of course, Jackie Kennedy, who we talked about at the top of the show, is who likely comes to mind first and foremost for listeners when talking about style and fashion and trendsetting. It's interesting to hear what you think is her most important work as a trendsetter, though. Tell us more about that and why you think this magazine appearance was so important.

Courtney Travers: Jacqueline Kennedy, I think, is really most important for our modern understanding of the position of first lady as trendsetter. She, even before Kennedy is elected, is thinking about what her inaugural ball gown is going to look like. She contrasts that aesthetic to Mamie Eisenhower. She says that she wants the aesthetic to be simple and elegant to kind of elevate in the same way that Tyler and Cleveland are doing, to elevate the presidency again and what we eventually will call the American century. So, she chooses, a la Dolley Madison, a number of white dresses to appear in during the inaugural moment. White, she felt, was the most ceremonial color, and she and the first family are featured in Harper's Bazaar and Vogue magazines.

(13:52): So, she and John Kennedy and their children appear in Harper's Bazaar, which is the preeminent fashion magazine of the moment, as a gesture of thanks to Diana Vreeland, who helps her find her designer, Oleg Cassini and, in that feature spread, which was shot by Richard Avedon who was a famous fashion photographer in the moment, she kind of shows this simple, elegant, somewhat spare aesthetic, and that comes to represent a lot of how we think about Kennedy imagery in the moment. Her gowns are tailored, they are understated, and they're just generally well-made and high quality. And so, those fashion magazine spreads introduced the public, for the first time, to the Kennedy administration and become really central to what she will continue to do throughout Kennedy's presidency.

Teri Finneman (14:52): Moving on to Michelle Obama, she tends to be known for both relatable clothing like wearing J.Crew, but also her emphasis on choosing diverse designers, including Jason Wu, who made her just amazing white gown for the first inauguration. But what I wanted to ask you more about was, you say she often used clothing to highlight key political principles of the administration. How did she do that?

Courtney Travers: Again, I think part of it she does through selection of diverse designers and selection of designers who are not well-established and conventional, right? So, she could have in that moment, given the sort of criticism and often racist coverage of her as first lady during the campaign trail, she could have chosen to wear Ralph Lauren or someone that we're really familiar with, and instead, she kind of subversively bucks that trend and says, “No, I'm not going to wear someone who's well-established. Instead, I'm gonna hire a stylist, Ikram Goldman, and I'm going to pick people who are relatively unknown.” Isabel Toledo is another designer she wears in the inaugural moment. Jason Wu she ends up wearing twice: first at the first inauguration, as you mentioned, with the one-shouldered white gown, and then she wears him again for the second inauguration.

(16:18): And so, she's really highlighting young, up-and-coming, diverse designers who – Isabel Toledo's Cuban American, of course, Jason Wu’s Canadian, and that's fascinating to me that she makes this sort of bold choice in this moment given coverage of her prior to President Obama's administration.

Teri Finneman: You know, obviously the Smithsonian has the exhibit that has the first ladies’ dresses there, which anytime I go there is just absolutely packed with people. Why do you think the American public is so interested in first lady dresses?

Courtney Travers (16:54): I think in each administration, they tell us something about the vision of that administration. They capture a kind of moment in time for us. So, you know, inaugurations, especially, in part, are about setting a vision of the administration, about articulating what a president's political vision is going to be and their highly ceremonial occasions. And so, I think that we also look to first ladies to complement that vision and to craft norms around femininity, around appropriate decorum in a given moment, and around fashion. Fashion becomes a way that we understand who they are and what they do given that they have less speech-making appearances often than presidents themselves.

Teri Finneman: So, out of all the first ladies that you took a look at when you were writing this book chapter, what trendsetting first lady most stuck out to you? Who did you find to be the most fascinating?

Courtney Travers (17:59): Honestly, it's been really interesting to delve into more research around 19th century first ladies because my work is primarily revolved around 20th and 21st century first ladies, and more particularly, post-World War II first ladies, and so to really think about some of the norms and precedents, i.e. wearing the color white, you know, that being sort of signifying as this highly ceremonial color. Things like Cleveland wearing an off-the-shoulder gown and then of course, so much is made of Michelle Obama's shoulders in that portrait, right, and she wears a sort of one-shouldered gown. So, thinking about the way that those visual precedents are set early on and then also shift and are discussed differently over time, that's been really fun, I think, to research.

Teri Finneman: All right. and then our final question of the show is why do you think studying first ladies matters?

Courtney Travers (18:58): I think anytime we can study women in public roles, that helps us understand ourselves a little more. It helps us understand how we expect women to be in public, but also new and different ways of being in public, and first ladies have a long history of exerting influence in just that way. So, I think it's important that we continue to study in as many ways as possible how they do that.

Teri Finneman: All right. Well, thanks so much for joining us today.

 Courtney Travers: Thank you, Teri. I appreciate it.

Teri Finneman: We hope you enjoyed the show. Tune in next time to uncover more untold histories of the nation's first ladies. I'm Teri Finneman, and this is the First Ladies podcast.

Show music credit: "Winning Elevation" by Hot_Dope.