First Ladies’ RNC & DNC Appearances Strive for Substance More Than Style

With a nation divided, an acrimonious presidential rematch underway between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump, Biden testing positive for COVID-19, and last weekend’s attempted assassination on Trump’s life, American politics is drawing extra attention.

With the Republican National Convention wrapping up Thursday night in Milwaukee and the Democratic National Convention slated to start Aug. 19 in Chicago, voters are tuning in to see what the candidates — and their partners — have to say.

Conventions provide the chance for spouses to humanize candidates, said Deborah Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “We’ve seen these roles evolve as women’s roles have changed. Hillary Clinton was clearly on the front line of that [in 1996] and took some real heat for saying she ‘could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession,’” said Walsh.

Democrats first staged a convention in 1832, and Republicans followed in 1856, but first ladies didn’t play a role until 1912, when President William Howard Taft’s wife “Nellie” was said to be the first first lady to attend a political convention. In 1940, Eleanor Roosevelt’s speech at the DNC — a historic moment for a first lady — was a pivotal point in making first ladies’ voices heard. Seeking a third term at that time, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had opted to skip the convention, but asked her to attend. As the U.S. was on the cusp of World War II, she showed up in “a plain blue gray dress with short sleeves, a blue straw hat with lighter blue flowers, the first lady was greeted with people standing, waving, shouting and cheering,” according to the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers. Brief but pointed, she told the crowd (among other things), “This is no ordinary time. No time for weighing anything except what we can best do for the country as a whole. And that rests on each and every one of us as individuals.” 

“Her appearance was credited with helping FDR to unify the convention and calm the delegates. She set the tone for speeches from candidates’ wives in terms of defining their husbands’ qualities from their unique perspectives,” said Nancy Kegan Smith, president of the First Ladies Association for Research and Education.

Decades passed before another first lady took a convention stage: Pat Nixon in 1972.

“The late ’40s to the ’60s was the height of the feminine mystique and women were not supposed to be high-profile political figures,” said Katherine Jellison, professor of U.S. women’s and gender history at Ohio University. “The fact that first ladies weren’t speaking publicly during that 32-year period was in line with what the social expectations were for women in their positions at that time.”

As women’s role in society and in the workforce has evolved, so, too, has the public perception of them. What they wear is often part of their broader message.

Smith speculated that Melania Trump, who called for Americans to “ascend the hate” on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, may still draw attention for her fashion choices at this week’s RNC. “I don’t think the media can resist talking, mentioning, the fashion component,” Smith said.

Trump’s stylist Hervé Pierre disagreed, saying Sunday, “This kind of horrible situation [referring to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life at a rally in Pennsylvania] reminds us that clothes and fashion are frivolous in this situation.”

But like it or not, the clothes that Melania Trump and Jill Biden choose to wear for when they step out before crowds at their respective conventions will be dissected by armchair critics — just as those of generations of other first ladies have been. For the pandemic-induced virtual DNC in 2020, Jill Biden opted for a lilac short-sleeve dress. Although FLOTUS has largely steered clear of talking about fashion, she landed the August cover of American Vogue.

Other first ladies such as Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush and Laura Bush also dressed conservatively to speak at the RNC when their respective husbands were nominated. But after the unofficial matchup in 1996 between the then-first lady Hillary Clinton at the DNC and Elizabeth Dole at the RNC, it became more of a standard that candidates’ spouses would play starring roles. Billed as dueling superwomen at the time, their attire — a robin’s egg blue skirt suit and strands of pearls for Clinton, and a pale peach skirt suit with a gold necklace for Dole, were side notes, not the main attraction. “It really brought this first lady role into the 1990s,” said Jellison.

Michelle Obama’s oratory skills at a few DNCs have been praised by many, and her fashion choices from independent designers like Maria Pinto and Tracy Reese have been name-checked, too. Meanwhile, at the 2016 RNC, Melania Trump (wearing a Roksanda Ilinčić dress) delivered a speech that was “a lowlight, when it was found” that some of her remarks had been lifted from one of Obama’s earlier speeches, Jellison said. Four years later she wore a buttoned-up khaki tailored Alexander McQueen ensemble for her RNC speech, but it was the sleeveless pleated neon green Valentino dress she wore on the convention’s final night that attracted more attention.

For first ladies, “it comes down to equal coverage — what did she say and what did she wear? Increasingly, it’s [about] what signals is she giving and what messages is she projecting in what she’s wearing,” Jellison said.

On occasion, secondary personalities grab the attention without speaking such as Tipper Gore, in a light blue long-sleeve dress, who was theatrically kissed onstage by her then-vice president husband Al in 2000.  

After being introduced at the podium by the Oscar-winning actor Jimmy Stewart at the 1972 RNC, Pat Nixon, wearing a pale blue long-sleeve chiffon dress, was greeted with more than five minutes of applause. When the crowd’s welcome continued, Nixon said at one point, “I don’t know what to do.” In fact the applause was so lengthy that she had little time to speak from the stage, Smith said. Nixon was lauded for championing volunteerism, taking a humanitarian trip to Peru, and for being the first first lady to visit Africa, Smith said.

Although Nancy Reagan’s remarks at the 1980 and 1984 RNC were not lengthy, at the latter she not only thanked the audience “for a life she never could have imagined,” but reminded them that her peach-colored silk dress was a repeat from the 1980 RNC. “I do hold on,” Reagan said.

That statement rang true in other ways. In 1982, Reagan had revealed that she had accepted thousands of dollars’ worth of designer merchandise.  

Wearing her signature three strings of pearls and a gold-buttoned red ensemble, Barbara Bush stressed that she was at the 1992 convention “not to give a speech, but to have a conversation and to thank hundreds of communities across the country…” She focused on family values and also intimated sexism, given the male-heavy roster, suggesting “something’s not quite right here.” In the years that followed, every presidential candidates’ wives spoke at their respective conventions.

Obama’s 2008 DNC debut was “extremely impactful” beyond her husband’s qualifications, but also her own example of realizing the American dream as an accomplished lawyer whose parents impressed upon her the importance of education, Smith said. She also spoke of how the White House had been built by slaves, which later led to the White House Historical Association’s “Slavery in the President’s Neighborhood,” a research initiative, Smith added.

For her 2008 speech, Michelle Obama impressed the audience in an emerald green dress from a little-known designer from her home city of Chicago: Maria Pinto. The Narciso Rodriguez black and red dress that she wore another night attracted a lot of attention on social media. For her 2012 DNC speech, she chose another independent designer — Tracy Reese, when she donned her pink sleeveless dress. 

More recently, when addressing the crowd at the 2020 DNC, Obama broke precedent by taking a firm political stance, saying that Donald Trump “was the wrong president for the country.” And during the DNC’s 2020 virtual convention, speaking from an empty high school classroom, where she once taught, Jill Biden spoke about the importance of education and her husband’s attributes, wearing a Brandon Maxwell coat dress.

“The speeches are really important in projecting an image of the candidate that only a wife can give. It’s a more feminine and soft-powered view and they humanize their husbands. They also give a view of themselves of what kind of first lady they may make,” Smith said.