The Complicated Politics of Rama Duwaji’s Style

By Vanessa Friedman

Rama Duwaji, the first lady of New York City, came out for New York Fashion Week on the next to last day of the shows. Unlike Mayor Eric Adams, who attended the Michael Kors and Ralph Lauren shows during his term in office, or Chirlane McCray, who popped up at Ralph Lauren during her husband Bill de Blasio’s administration, Ms. Duwaji did not opt for the city’s biggest, most established names, the ones that dress the power players and celebrities of the city.

Instead, she took her front row seat at Diotima, the small, independent fashion label founded by Rachel Scott, a Black, queer, immigrant woman often discussed as the future of New York fashion. And though Ms. Duwaji declined requests for comment after the show, other than deeming it “great,” the choice clearly reflected the complicated balancing act that Ms. Duwaji is facing as she assumes her new role as the de facto hostess of the city. She came out to support fashion, one of New York’s core industries, but she drew her spotlight to one of its less famous, most intersectional names.

“The role of first lady has become, over the last few decades, increasingly high-profile,” said Katherine Jellison, professor emerita of American history at Ohio University who has studied first ladies. “It started on the national stage and has filtered down to the state and even city level.”

That means that, as more appearances by Ms. Duwaji follow — at holiday events and fund-raisers like the Whitney Museum party she attended in January — so, too, will more public scrutiny. And when it comes to fashion, that can prove particularly tricky, as Ms. Duwaji experienced after her husband’s midnight swearing in. Her choice of boots with long, witchy toes and laces up the back provoked an avalanche of criticism on social media after some commentators discovered they cost $630.

“They want New Yorkers to hand over more than half their income to the government, while she wears designer boots worth your weekly paycheck,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, wrote on her Instagram story.

“Their ‘affordability’ agenda got off on the wrong foot,” the punning New York Post offered.

This despite a post on Substack from Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, the stylist and fashion insider who had worked with Mr. Mamdani and Ms. Duwaji to choose their looks for the inauguration, that tried to reframe the discussion. In it, she identified the boots as on loan from Miista, the vintage Balenciaga coat Ms. Duwaji wore to the swearing-in as rented from one of “the city’s best small, circular fashion businesses” and her inaugural coat as custom-made by Cynthia Merhej, the Palestinian Lebanese designer of Renaissance Renaissance.

And though Ms. Karefa-Johnson wrote in her Substack post that Ms. Duwaji should be able to present herself however she wants, it is, in fact, not nearly that simple.

Every first lady is, to a certain extent, walking a tightrope between being an individual and being a symbol. But, Ms. Jellison said, “if the new first lady of New York wants to present a consistent image of what democratic socialism looks like … well, that’s uncharted territory.”

Ms. Duwaji has to represent herself and her values as an artist, a Syrian American and a 20-something, as well as the values of the administration — especially its promise to focus on affordability — and the city. She must embody change but not in a scary way. She has to look as sophisticated as New York but also be of the people. She is expected to be authentic but has to calculate how.

Is that even possible?

The Affordability Issue

“In 2014, we were shocked by how much more exposure, how much more interest and how much more nit-picking there was than ever before,” former Mayor Bill de Blasio said of the public focus on imagery.

That was brought home when, in 2015, Chirlane McCray, his wife at the time, wore a blue trouser suit that internet commentators wrongly perceived as jeans to the funeral of a slain policeman. The suit was actually by an independent New York designer, and Ms. McCray said she deliberately wore designers of color during her time as first lady, so she was unprepared for the assumptions that she had just tossed something on with no consideration.

“Ten years later,” Mr. de Blasio said, “that is in overdrive.” It has turned Gracie Mansion into what he called a “fishbowl plus plus plus.”

“Political culture has become celebrity culture,” he said. And photographs are “how the general public has been trained to receive information.”

This is certainly so for Ms. Duwaji, who has to navigate the attention at a time when, thanks to social media, there is more exposure to images of the people in the role than ever before and more fluency in the language of fashion. There’s a reason Mr. Mamdani’s first news conference was with influencers and content creators rather than the traditional media.

The anti-establishment aspect of Mr. Mamdani’s election and the way it is being framed as a potential national portent means that people across the country are paying attention. Add to that the first couple’s millennial-Gen Z status, and suddenly every choice Ms. Duwaji makes is fraught with meaning and becomes fodder for comment.

Especially when it comes to her clothes. And especially since Ms. Duwaji has given only one official interview since Mr. Mamdani won the primary, but she has appeared in public, in official settings, at least seven times. What she wears is essentially going to speak for her — and, by association, her husband.

Perhaps that is why that one interview, with The Cut, the New York magazine vertical, was accompanied by what was effectively a fashion shoot. It featured clothes by young New York labels like (yes) Diotima, Peter Do, Ashlyn and Colleen Allen, along with more established names like Marc Jacobs and the French label Jacquemus. Each picture came with credits noting that the clothes were “on loan.”

It was an unusual statement, given that clothes for magazine shoots are always on loan. But it was clearly calculated to make it clear to those who might not know how magazines work that Ms. Duwaji was not profiting from her increased profile.

After all, as a 28-year-old, it’s not as if she has a wardrobe full of outfits designed for major public occasions. She needs new clothes, which makes how she will dress even more complicated, chiefly when it comes to affordability. New clothes can cost a lot of money — especially new designer clothes.

As fashion prices become ever more stratospheric, they bring into sharp relief the economic gulf between the classes that Mr. Mamdani has vowed to address. Even though Ms. Duwaji rented the coat she wore for the swearing-in, which was a nod to both sustainability and economy (as was borrowing the boots), and even though she is supporting small businesses, the image she offered was one of aspiration and coded luxury. Whether the way she created that image, and why, matters as much as the image itself is the source of the tension.

It’s not as if the general public can borrow a pair of designer boots. For further proof, consider the furor over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance at the Met Gala in 2021 in a dress from the designer Aurora James with the slogan “Tax the Rich” emblazoned on the back. In the end, and despite the fact that the congresswoman rented the dress, the debate was less about the literal message (or how much she paid for the dress) and more about whether, as a democratic socialist, she should have been dressed up in a designer gown at the most expensive fund-raiser in the city in the first place. She has not been back to the party since.

The Medium Is the Message

This is why, Ms. Ellison said, politicians and their spouses now need stylists. “There is an obvious professionalized intention for how they are going to dress,” she said.

And it’s not just stylists. Bailey Moon, the stylist who worked with former President Joseph R. Biden and Jill Biden during their time in the White House, and who helped Mr. Mamdani and Ms. Duwaji plan their election night looks, noted that he was one voice among many. When it comes to political wardrobe, there is, he said, “constant dialogue and constant vetting with the principal’s teams, who are obviously government-minded.”

Indeed, Mr. de Blasio said that when he was in office, “there was always a conversation about imagery in one form or another.”

Perhaps that’s why, when it comes to Ms. Duwaji, the negotiation over messaging has already begun.

Perhaps because of that, or maybe because of Mr. Moon’s relationship with the Democratic establishment (and despite Mr. Moon having volunteered his services), he was soon out, and Ms. Karefa-Johnson, a former Vogue editor who is known for her outspoken views on the war in Gaza, fashion and race, was in. And, in an unexpected move, she was allowed to publish her essay outing her new gig and explaining what clothing she chose and why.

The Mamdani administration declined to comment further, but other stylists, often frustrated at being muzzled about their contributions, were enthusiastic.

Still, it didn’t make much difference: By the time Ms. Karefa-Johnson’s Substack post appeared, the expensive boot narrative had taken hold. While there has always been what Keena Lipsitz, a professor of political science at Queens College, called “outrage over first lady fashion,” social media means “the outrage spreading more quickly than it once did.”

This will most likely become an issue as the Met Gala looms in early May. It’s an event where the frivolity and cost associated with fashion and the plutocrats that support it is inextricable from the support it creates for one of the city’s most important cultural institutions. Once again, the values the Mamdani administration espouses may be caught in the middle. Ms. Duwaji’s choices have real-world implications, not just in idle chatter but in business.

According to Ms. Merhej, the Renaissance Renaissance designer, she gained about 11,000 followers in the week after the inauguration — a 33 percent increase — and has had a lot of interest from local press in the Middle East and North Africa, like CNN Arabia, Hia and Emirates Woman. “It shows how the American influence is dominant in the region and why it’s so meaningful that Rama wore our design,” she said.

Similarly, Irene Albright, the founder of Albright Fashion Library, the vintage rental service from which Ms. Duwaji sourced her Balenciaga coat, said that after the news broke about the rental, “my social media spiked, and the phone has been ringing off the hook, especially with inquiries from a younger audience.”

Still, for all the positive reaction, there were also critics who could not separate their politics from their party dresses. “I also heard from people who were not happy with me even renting to her,” Ms. Albright said.