Threads that bind politicians' wives

It is curious that both the biggest style icons on either side of the Atlantic — Michelle Obama and the Duchess of Cambridge — appear to follow the fashion cues of a fictional 'Politician's Wife', Alicia Florrick. While there is no real similarity between the character in the eponymous TV series played by Julianna Margulies and the British royal beyond a seeming preference for Michael Kors' classics, the parallels with the US First Lady point to the fact that life can sometimes imitate fiction. The two chic ladies are married — one for real, the other not — to successful, charismatic politicians from Chicago, and both are trained lawyers themselves too. Florrick returns to court while Obama's life looks unlikely to take that turn, but both had carried off identical grey Michael Kors tweed skirt-and-jacket ensemble with equal aplomb, albeit many months apart.

The faux pas can be attributed, of course, to a slip up by Mrs Obama's stylists as prime-time TV dramas are clearly not on their watch list even if the setting happens to be the hometown of the First Couple. Worse, it means Mrs Obama herself does not watch the hit show either. That is a marked departure from the time when another First Lady — Laura Bush — famously identified with the most popular fictional TV spouses of a decade ago, 'Desperate Housewives'.