Now that the race for the Presidency has been won and Mr. Obama is President-Elect, who got your vote in the other ‘election’? The two potential first ladies in the USA have been demonstrating their own votes – for the type of clothes, colours and styles that they have been wearing.

Michelle Obama dresses in an elegantly soft and approachable manner with an added smidgeon of drama and creativity. She displays a sassy approach by contrasting strong bright colours with black cardigans and chocolate coloured belts.

Cindy McCain dresses in a classical and timeless style with her conventionally matching jackets and skirts and strings of pearls.

What comes across is how both women demonstrate how confident they are in what they are wearing and that they demonstrate that through the colours and styles they wear. In other words they don’t appear to be stylised (even if they are!).

Michelle has been wearing a variety of outfits and the one worth focusing on was a gorgeous purple A-line dress which flattered her body shape perfectly. She topped it off with a little black cardigan and black patent low heeled shoes. This dress is perfectly ‘on trend’ in terms of colour and in terms of how Michelle was wearing it. She gave it a slightly classical twist by wearing a string of pearls. What Michelle was demonstrating was an outfit which was both up to the minute and traditional. She also went for comfort with the type of shoes she chose to wear. Michelle has lots of options for the future with that gorgeous purple dress. She could make it more dramatic if she puts it with a deep red cardigan or jacket or she could go deeper with a burgundy or navy cardigan instead.

Cindy has worn some classic suits, one of which was in a soft heathery colour in a tweed style fabric. It looked both comfortably warm and chic which she teamed up with opaque tights/stockings, black courts and a black jumper. She was wearing a limited amount of black because black doesn’t suit someone with fair colouring. In fact she might even consider putting that suit with an icy pink or lilac top as that would have brought out the colour of her eyes more. This makes the outfit look different and enables her to retain her classic style personality.

Both ladies are style icons for their generation and are great role models for ladies everywhere looking for some inspiration in their clothes.

Ann Skidmore is a Corporate Image Consultant with Colour Me Beautiful, and is based in Staffordshire (UK).

www.annskidmorecmb.co.uk