Fashion has always been political, but never more so than when coupled with the towering bully pulpit of the U.S. presidency.
John F. Kennedy popularized the Ivy League style with his slim, single-breasted suits, signaling an end to the buttoned-up culture of the 1950s. In keeping with his transformational persona, Barack Obama tried to liven things up with a tan suit, only to scandalize the fusty Washington establishment. Donald J. Trump’s straightforward power ties celebrated traditional masculinity. Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s retro aviator shades winked winsomely at an aging nation.
And before all that, there was the unexpectedly elegant, mid-thigh-length brown coat George Washington wore to his inauguration as the nation’s first president on April 30, 1789, at Federal Hall in Lower Manhattan. (At the time, New York was the capital of the United States.) The garment is fragile and usually stays in storage, but it will be on display at Mount Vernon, Washington’s expansive plantation home, for the next few weeks to coincide with Mr. Trump’s second inauguration.
Mr. Washington was a rich man, but the unadorned, single-breasted brown coat made of American wool does not suggest a longing to meet the tastes of London and Paris. Nor is there any hint of the president’s record as the commander in chief of the Continental Army — no golden epaulets or bright blue sashes, such as those that he wore when Charles Willson Peale painted him after the Battle of Princeton.
“He very clearly made the decision he wasn’t going to be a monarch,” said Summer Anne Lee, a historian at the Fashion Institute of Technology who is writing a book about presidential fashion. “He wasn’t going to dress like a king.”
Ms. Lee added that Mr. Washington and other founding fathers, such as John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, “took a great amount of pride in the stark contrast between the simple American dress and gaudy European dress,” perhaps best embodied by the resplendent robes George IV wore at his coronation as King of England in 1821.
Mr. Washington’s sartorial decisions were partly inspired by a notice submitted to The Federal Gazette by “a Philadelphia mechanic,” who said the nascent democracy’s elected leaders “should all be clothed in complete suits of American manufactured cloth,” in what amounts to a very early example of the “shop local” movement.
Mr. Washington was persuaded to forego the finer European fabrics for wool from the Hartford Woolen Manufactory. “There Broadcloths are not of the first quality, as yet, but they are good,” he wrote of its offerings in a letter to Henry Knox. The suit itself was made at Mount Vernon by Mr. Washington’s personal tailor, the indentured servant Caven Bowe.
Scholars were only recently able to establish that this coat was, in fact, the one Mr. Washington wore at his inauguration, said Adam T. Erby, Mount Vernon’s curator of fine and decorative arts.
The coat, in many ways, shows its age. Light has damaged the fabric, which is one of the reasons it is rarely shown. Moths have taken a visible toll. The buttons were ripped out long ago. Pieces of cloth were cut off and given away as mementos. It was last shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute as part of an exhibition in 2022, and according to Mr. Erby, it will go back into storage until the 2028 presidential inauguration once the current exhibition concludes on Feb. 3.
The rest of the items Mr. Washington wore that day — breeches, a waistcoat, a linen shirt, a type of decorative neckwear known as a jabot — are missing. Mount Vernon’s collections do hold a double-breasted brown suit Mr. Washington would have worn “when he was riding during the presidency,” Mr. Erby said.
“We have both the breeches and the jacket, which is pretty cool,” he added.
Yet the less adorned inaugural coat leaves more of an impression. Like other fashion classics — Diane von Furstenberg’s wrap dress, the Burberry trench coat — it captures a time, yet feels timeless.
“I think what’s important to know about the suit is the way that it sets the tone for every president afterwards in that it does not align the president with a sense of being above the people, but with the people, the same class as the people — even though that is a complete illusion,” said Philip De Paola, a graduate student at F.I.T. who is recreating a more elaborate suit that Washington wore for post-inauguration festivities.
While the fashion choices of first ladies are closely parsed, the president-elect today is expected to wear an unfussy overcoat — a must for a January day in Washington — and, beneath it, as bland a business uniform as imaginable. Golf outings and beach vacations allow for more casual clothes, and state dinners require formal wear, yet Americans will mostly see their president in some variation of that same sober suit.
But before today’s bulky overcoats, the navy suits and monochrome ties, there were Mr. Washington’s inaugural vestments, as welcome and surprising as democracy itself.
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