Michelle Obama illustration by Rob Biddulph based on portrait by Ethan Miller/Getty Images
• Rachel Cooke
• Alexandra Shulman
• Mariella Frostrup
• Gina McCauley
• Julie Myerson
• Gaby Wood
• Camila Batmanghelidjh
• Carole Cadwalladr
• Barbara Ellen
• Elizabeth Day
• Louise France
• Miranda Sawyer
• What she said
• What they said
Michelle Obama's Secret Service code name is Renaissance. This is apt. The role of First Lady has long seemed old-fashioned, even moribund, and those who tried to fiddle with it did so at their peril. While a revolution was taking place in the lives of most American women, Jacqueline Kennedy kept her own bra firmly on, devoting herself instead to interior decoration and the replanting of the Rose Garden. Thereafter, a pattern was set. Forget Eleanor Roosevelt: it was the job of the First Lady, be she ever so boring (Barbara Bush) or ever so brittle (Nancy Reagan), to write menus, to commission pretty new china, and to advance various uncontroversial Good Causes. She was allowed to care about flowers and trees (Lady Bird Johnson) or refugees (Rosalynn Carter), but not too much, and not too politically. When Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Washington, maiden name still in tow, and promptly abandoned the White House chef to his recipe books while she took on a job attempting to overhaul healthcare, there was widespread outrage. How dare she? It wasn't long before poor old Hillary was back indoors, plumping cushions, writing invitations and chewing her fist.
Obama is only three months into her strange new career as First Lady, yet already the job feels refreshed: less dusty, less embarrassing, less tight-assed. To all intents and purposes, she really has effected some kind of renaissance, not by bagging some high-profile role as, say, Barack's Middle East envoy - she made it clear right from the start that politics was not part of her own plan - but simply by being herself: a wife and a mother, but also a clever, educated woman. She is the first First Lady anyone can remember who seems remotely like the rest of us, or other women we know, and not just because she is only 45 (Hillary Clinton, remember, was 45 when she became First Lady, Laura Bush was 54). She has a quality that cannot be faked: to be prosaic about it, she is normal.
Women can scent normality at 100 paces, not to mention through the pages of a glossy magazine. We know it when we see it. And while we can be merciless about other women, passing judgment on them in an instant, we are keen on sisterhood, too. Obama feels like a sister: feminine, and with hard-felt ideas about domesticity, but in no sense a daffy pinny-wearer; tough and ambitious, but without having appropriated male behaviour as a way of getting on.
This paradigm shift feels like a minor miracle, and you can't help but feel that Hillary Clinton, so often and so horribly reviled, must look at Michelle, in her perky cardigans and her J Crew skirts, and wonder how she has pulled it off. In the beginning, after all, Obama was regularly characterised in the press as an "angry black woman" (her speech to an audience in Milwaukee in which she said: "For the first time in my life, I am proud of my country" went down about as well as some of Hillary's sarky comments about Tammy Wynette, standing by your man, and baking cookies).
What's more, she and Hillary have plenty in common. Both grew up in Chicago, in reasonably modest circumstances. Both were academic (Princeton and Harvard for Obama, Wellesley and Yale for Clinton). The two also shared an early reputation for being straitlaced and determined (Obama's friends called her the Taskmaster; Clinton's high-school yearbook made some joke about how she would one day be a nun called Sister Frigidaire). So how come everyone is now mad for Obama? It's so unfair.
But the truth is that there was always something unconvincing about Clinton's efforts to appear well-rounded; a part of you always knew that she was more interested in talking about Kosovo and Gulf War syndrome than cookie recipes. I don't especially blame her for this - why shouldn't a woman be like that? - but I can see that it didn't make one warm to her. Obama, on the other hand, seems not to feel the need constantly to remind others of her intellect. She is comfortable with girl talk. Anecdotes about how Barack looked as he drove her home from hospital after the birth of their first child - nervous - fall from her lips easily, if not unthinkingly. This is a generational thing. It was Obama's good fortune to enter the world of work at a different, and more progressive moment than Clinton. At the same point in her life when Clinton was serving mint juleps in the Governor's Mansion in Arkansas and worrying that her brain was turning to mush, Obama was in Chicago, working in law and later in hospital administration; when Barack was elected senator she didn't even feel the need to move to Washington.
But perhaps it's to do with Obama's essential personality, too. Granted, in reality we know little about her. The information that we have been given has been doled out in coffee spoons. It has to do with internet shopping - all that "cute" stuff you can find there! - and the irritation she feels when the president's undergarments fail to find their way to the laundry basket; with Italian food, which she likes, and with her mother's fried chicken, made with Ritz crackers in the batter, which she apparently avoids.
Still, the thing that really strikes me is that, for all the trials involved in being First Lady - and they must be legion - Obama looks like she is enjoying herself. Gone are the long-suffering looks and clenched, lacquered smiles of past First Ladies. She is not enduring; she is thriving. Her wardrobe has been much praised for its use of acid yellow and credit crunch-defying high-street bargains. Maybe so. What I like about it is the obvious pleasure she takes in it. I keep imagining her tying the outsized bow on the white blouse that she wore on her big trip to Europe, and the home film that I see in my mind's eye - she has a few attempts and then, triumphant at last, does a little twirl in front of her mirror - makes me smile. She went to Harvard; I think it's OK for her to play around with outsized bows and for us to relish that play, so long as we never forget that she is only the third First Lady to have a postgraduate degree, and that one day, when all this is over, when it is her turn, she will resume her career out there in the real world.
Rachel Cooke
In the past year Michelle Obama has redefined power dressing. It's taken a tall, toned black woman to show women the world over that if you are one of the most influential females in the world it's OK to look like you enjoy your clothes, to indulge in the pleasure of fashion and to take risks with your wardrobe. While the wife of the President of the United States is not actively involved in negotiating world debt or waging war on terror, and is more likely to be seen digging a spadeful of organic compost into the White House garden or hugging a small child, she is nonetheless a powerful fashion role model if she so wishes to be. And Michelle Obama most obviously does wish to be. Her wardrobe, which ranges comfortably from the preppy accessibility of J Crew and Gap to expensive designers such as America's young Thakoon and the well-established Narciso Rodriguez, embraces bright colour, jazzy patterns, difficult bows (not necessarily a good thing once over 30) and crystalline sparkles. Unlike the last new kid on the political-wife block, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, she has no desire to show her respectability by wearing a sophisticated version of schoolgirl uniform, and instead uncompromisingly seems to be saying: "Look at me - it's such fun to be a woman."
Interestingly, her choice of designers has veered almost completely away from the Waspy big names of American fashion previously associated with glamorous dressing such as Ralph Lauren, Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera, and instead she champions the often mixed-race, younger gang. Until her patronage they were relatively little known outside the fashion network: Thakoon, Jason Wu, Isabel Toledo. But, equally interestingly, the clothes she wears from them are almost identical in style to those she might have bought from the traditional names and owe more to the Mad Men vision of 50s-style domestic femininity than they do to any edgy, androgynous new-age fashion.
She bares her famous arms in cutaway sheaths, she belts her narrow back and slim waist, wears her hemlines just below the knee to show stockingless shapely calves and ankles. No drab pantsuits, power shoulders or serviceable tailoring for her - Michelle knows that a pencil skirt and cardi is often a girl's best friend.
And let's not forget that she is black and has worked her way up from a poor Chicagoan childhood. Her obvious pleasure in faintly bling detailing - the Tom Binns crystal necklace for the inauguration, her sequined cardigan for her visit to Downing Street, her rows of bracelets - owe more than a nod to the style of her generation of black Americans. Much as we love the way she looks, with this country's complicated attitudes to class and appearance, would we feel the same unquestioning adoration of a privileged white woman in her position who dressed similarly?
Alexandra Shulman
Imagining sex in the White House is a pastime as old as the presidency itself. After all, if we can't fi nd time for it, how on earth can the leader of the free world? Yet JFK secretly serviced an infamous stream of lovelies in his private suites. Conversely, Bill Clinton swears it didn't happen with Ms Lewinsky and, let's face it, it's even less likely that it did occur between him and Hillary. Memories of George Bush's reign are as faint as the image on the Turin Shroud, and he and Laura always seemed more interested in identifying sinners than having sex.
It leaves expectations of the Obamas at record highs. My guess is that they can live up to it. It's rare to see a couple move so naturally around each other. Body language is such a giveaway. They're never in each other's space but always lingering comfortably on the periphery of it. They slide together on platforms and in photos like feet into old slippers. You never see them physically collide, or perform the kind of nervy sidelong checks that other famous duo s, like Brangelina and Posh and Becks, can't seem to avoid. There's plenty of eye contact, but it's of a slightly combative nature: they look like they are challenging each other to greater heights, infinitely more convincing than dewy-eyed romance.
Much appears exceptional about the new residents of America's most famous mansion, not least that they set the benchmark pretty high when it comes to relationships. Is it possible in such cynical times that the new President and his wife truly like each other? There are marriages that suggest functioning partnerships and others that survive against the odds. There are unions that have disaster etched into them from day one and others that seem to be writ in stone. From the evidence on display I'd say the Michelle and Barack bond is as solid as Mount Rushmore. There are few couples less likely to fall prey to the curse of Hello!. Then again, as I said at the beginning, it's all imagination …
Mariella Frostrup
We don't get to see women like Michelle Obama very often in American popular culture - a black professional married to the father of her children, and apparently happy and healthy. As a black woman, for me the beauty of Obama doesn't come from her make-up or her cardigans but from the fact that editorial decision-makers and entertainment executives can't control her image.
But even now there's an undercurrent in media coverage suggesting that someone like Obama doesn't belong - as if somehow this Harvard-educated attorney and former executive squeaked in under the wire, and that it's a miracle that she knows which fork to use, and that she is some alien being standing next to the Queen. While it's fun to watch her on TV - the clothes, the waves, the trademark Michelle Obama hugs - it feels similar to the coverage of Olympic figure skating, where the commentators' incessant chatter ignores the athleticism and obsesses over the costume choice.
The worst outcome of the attention focused on Obama would be the suggestion that she is an "exception" or "rare". She's extraordinary, but I know plenty of women like her. We're here. We can be glamorous. We can comport ourselves appropriately on the world stage and stand shoulder to shoulder with heads of state. Michelle is a reminder that black American women are not the sum of the stereotypes and dysfunction on constant display in the media. She is exactly where she is supposed to be. And when the world sees her, the world gets to see us.
Gina McCauley
At first I hardly noticed her. I was too busy looking at him. But then that's another of her strengths: nothing about her says "Look at me", but when you do get around to looking, there's something startling and graceful there. Michelle seems careful, intelligent, alert, aware, but somehow also unguarded, unaffected. She looks like a woman who likes other women, someone who would ask you a question about your work, your world, your family, and listen with real attention to the answer. You feel it might be possible to have a proper conversation, to explore, to laugh. There is a warmth to her. She would be exhilarating to have as a friend.
I like the shape of her. The way she looks like she's grown a little sheepishly into her tallness. The best thing about Michelle's much talked about clothes is you can imagine her first thing in the morning, alive and naked, putting them on. She is wonderfully, unremittingly physical. We know she touched the Queen, but she touches other people, too: a slender wrist, comfortable against her husband's shoulder, both hands of a child spontaneously grasped on a dance floor. A high five. That sudden smile.
I like her apparent humility, her just detectable shyness, her palpable sense of humour, her willingness to look thrilled and happy, her touching lack of cool, her mad new dog and her vegetables and the genuine delight that shines from her daughters' faces. Most of all, I like the fact that she looks happy - and she looks as if she makes other people happy, too.
Julie Myerson
Barack Obama could not have done it on his own. An obvious point to make, perhaps, but consider what the presidential campaign - or the White House - would look like without Michelle Obama. She is not simply a supporting cast member, as most other First Ladies have been; she is not a competitor. She is a human chemical that drastically changes the perception of Barack Obama himself. If he was considered too statesmanlike, she was accessible; if his origins were foreign and disparate, she could be traced to a single block in Chicago; if he was thought not black enough, her background made up for that; if anyone worried that he was too black, she played up family ties that were universal. In one of the most morally inflammatory elections of all time, Obama made everything seem natural: she talked about her children, she gently teased her husband, she bought her clothes online.
Most importantly, she makes her husband seem like a superhero and a human being at the same time. Everybody loves a superhero; but will everybody vote for one? Almost certainly not. Obama normalises, neutralises: she instructs her staff not to clean up after the children because they must learn to do it themselves; her mother has moved in upstairs; when an aide comes to tell her the President is on his way home, she says, "No kidding", because she can already hear the helicopter.
In a recent interview with Oprah Winfrey, she said: "Barack is a human being with flaws, but those flaws are not fundamental. They don't hit upon things that are intolerable to me. In terms of his core values, he has never disappointed me. He is a very consistent person - which is why I knew unequivocally that he would be a phenomenal president."
That Barack Obama is loved like this at all makes you love him more; that he is loved in this way by this woman makes him the most powerful creature on earth - all the more so because you feel she would not let him abuse that power. The personal has never been so fortuitously political.
Gaby Wood
It is a moment of awe, where "little people" feel they are the "big" people, because the "big" people appreciate them so much.Many of the children of Kids Company experienced a profound sense of legitimacy when the Obamas entered the White House, having been rejected for years, insulted through racism and hatred; they never thought a couple with the same colour as their skin would lead America. Barack Obama was recognised as the inspiration; Michelle Obama was a surprise - embracing, attuned: an icon in her own right.
Kids Company founder Camila Batmanghelidjh
Who hugged who first? Did Michelle Obama reach out and put her arm around the Queen? Or was it the other way around? The Daily Mail was in no doubt. Hug-gate, the story and image which appeared on front pages around the world and threatened to eclipse the G20 summit, was "an electrifying moment of palpable majesté: a breach of centuries-long protocol".
It was not simply that Obama hugged: it was that the Queen hugged back. A simple, tender thing which had never happened before - although the New York Daily News pointed out that Paul Keating, the Australian prime minister, tried it back in 1992 and was promptly nicknamed the Lizard of Oz.
It was the first hug of Michelle Obama's first official overseas state visit, and the most spectacular, but not the only one. The next day she was hugging mother-of-five Trudi Cogdell, who had been diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. Sarah Brown had taken Michelle to Charing Cross Hospital, where Cogdell was briefed beforehand that the First Lady would stand "a few metres away. But as soon as she walked in, she sat down next to me and said: 'Come on, big hugs,' and cuddled me and my children."
The same day, she made an emotional speech at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
School in Islington, a school where 92% of the pupils are black or ethnic minority and in the top 2% most deprived in the country, and compared herself, and her story, to them. The reaction she received was of the type more usually accorded to a boy band than the wife of a world leader. At the end, pupils rushed the stage, and one tried to shake her hand, but as Sabrina Chowdhury, 16, told the press, she rebuffed them: "She said to us: 'I do hugs' and just hugged us. It was amazing."
In just two days, Michelle Obama carved out a niche for herself which encompasses not just being First Lady, but practically the most totemic of all female roles: the Good Mother.
Carole Cadwalladr
So, Michelle Obama. Housewife Superstar? Can you imagine Hillary even pretending to go along with this? Or Cherie, who famously penned a "Memo to Michelle", outlining the pitfalls of being wife to a world leader: that you can have influence but no power; that your own views are disenfranchised. "Whatever it is you're doing as First Lady, it is not being equal to the President of the United States," opined Cherie. "Well, duh," you can imagine Michelle thinking, or even: "Lighten up, ladies."
It's one of the many reasons Michelle O is so interesting. Some of us were worried at first - were they going to muzzle this woman, turn her into a Stepford First Lady? However, she has neither struggled with her new role nor allowed it to diminish her.
Here is a woman who, when faced with the cringeworthy presidential candidate wifely "bake-off", responded with an ironic wink and the most laid-back shortbread recipe you ever saw. A wife who is happy to look after her "snorey stinky" man because he looks after her right back. A mother who allowed her daughters their White House pooch, but you can bet that away from the cameras there was a lecture about pooper scoopers and responsibility.
No Surrendered Wife (or surrendered anything): When she talks about food, you can believe she cooks - sometimes hurriedly, even badly. If and when she dons an apron, it will be to keep her clothes clean, with no worthy fretting about the connotations. This is the essence of Obama - smart, witty, warm, practical, happy. Complete. The Harvard-educated former hospital administrator seems to have taken the true feminist line that personal choice is power. Hillary shouldn't be damned for wanting the presidency, nor Laura Bush for not wanting it. However, Michelle represents a new wave of flexi-womanhood, for whom domesticity isn't a cage, a trap, but rather an opportunity.
Downtrodden, diminished, disenfranchised? Come off it, we're talking about Mummy Biceps here. Looking at Obama, Den Mom In Excelsis, you get the impression that she isn't going to live her life through her husband and children but simply with them, alongside them.
Barbara Ellen
Before Michelle Obama, the female celebrity could be broadly divided into two height categories: teeny-tiny actress with elfin features or improbably tall supermodel with no hips. Michelle - all glorious 5ft 11in of her - is the first woman in the public eye to celebrate so defiantly both her height and her curves. She exudes self-confidence in her stature. She does not fall into that classic tall-person trap of slouching apologetically towards shorter mortals. And when she met the Queen, Michelle did not gloss over the yawning height chasm that lay between them but posed for the photographers with her shoulders back and her head held high.
Speaking as a tall woman myself, it is cheering to have Michelle Obama as my new role model. When I had my growth spurt at 17, there was no one like her to identify with. At 5ft 11in, I stood out, quite literally, from my friends and spent my teenage years being warned by my grandmother that I would never attract a husband if I pigheadedly insisted on getting bigger.
So what I most admire about Michelle Obama's height is that she does not seek to disguise it. Unlike Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, Michelle does not wear flat-soled ballet pumps in case her spouse feels emasculated.
Barack is clearly a man secure enough to be able to revel in his wife's stature. Michelle's height complements his masculinity rather than challenges it. Like him, most of us would want Michelle on our team.
Especially if it was basketball.
Elizabeth Day
If you had to nominate the one man in Michelle Obama's life who informs the decisions she makes, it wouldn't be the 44th President of the United States. This is a woman who is überorganised - over prepared, a stickler for order. Someone who, as a mother of two small daughters, would set the alarm for 4.30am in order to squeeze in some gym time. She might sound obsessive, a tad controlling, until you remember that her father, Fraser Robinson III, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when she was only one. As this unpredictable, humbling disease got worse, as his walking sticks were replaced with a motorised chair, as getting dressed grew more difficult, he would rise earlier and earlier in order to reach work on time.
While Barack Obama struggled with his own identity, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson has always known exactly where she comes from. Her great-great-grandfather was a slave from South Carolina. Hers was a solid blue-collar family life - she grew up in a small apartment in a middle-class area on Chicago's South Side. "No silver spoons, no magic," she says. Her bedroom was the tiny living room, partitioned and shared with her elder brother Craig.
Fraser worked shifts maintaining the boilers and pumps in the city's water-filtration plant. Michelle's mother, Marian, stayed at home until the children were in high school. Saturday evenings were spent playing board games, summers were passed at a modest holiday camp. There were rules uncannily like those she imposes on her own daughters.
With Craig, there was trust - early on in her relationship with Barack she asked her brother to check him out over a game of basketball - and healthy competition. "I'm smarter than him. If he can get into Princeton, I can," she told herself. (Their parents paid the fees with the help of an insurance policy and a credit card.) She says her mother is her best friend. So much so she begged her to move into the White House.
During the election campaign her voice broke when she described the fierce stoicism with which Fraser faced life. You could not watch your father's body incrementally pack in - for this is what MS eventually does, to your feet and your knees, your arms and your fingers - and not learn compassion, determination. And also, perhaps, vulnerability, although it's a side she rarely reveals (Craig and Marian say she's never once phoned them in tears). Her father died in 1991, aged 56. Michelle was 27. A year later she married the second most important man in her life. The timing can not have been a coincidence.
Louise France
Mom-in-chief. What a ludicrous title that is. Like cultural brand enhancer, or chief executive officer, the more you consider it, the sillier it seems. Unless Michelle Obama really does have a crack troop of trained mothers under her command, armed with Wet Wipes and a GPS locator of enemy naughty steps. It's that or she beat Angelina in an arm-wrestle for the cup...
In fact, Obama chose Mom-in-chief as her job description because she wanted her husband to be President. "Princeton- and Harvard-qualified lawyer turned community affairs director" was too scary for the voters to deal with. They didn't want to know that until she stepped aside for his political ambitions Michelle was earning more than Barack. Or that when he began his legal career she was his mentor. That she's been a determined high achiever from the moment she entered school.
We forget, but before she claimed M-I-C status, Michelle was struggling in her new public role. She was seen as too emasculating, too political, too clumsy. And, after she gave her husband a fist bump in celebration at his candidate nomination, too black.
"Mom-in-chief" dispels all of that. For a start, it hides the fact that Michelle will still be working while in the White House. Not for a wage, but as an extension of her old community outreach work, focusing mostly on women's issues. That's OK, because her new job title implies homeliness, but of a modern kind. Not baking cookies, but setting standards.
In fact, what Mom-in-chief does, in the way that "stay-at-home mom" or "home-maker" never can, is convey the status that many mothers have within their families. Daddy may be off earning millions and/or changing the world, but it's yer ma that runs the household. Whether a woman works or not, to the chagrin of all those who call themselves feminists, the tedious fact is that most mothers are the responsible adult in the family. Responsible for more than their own lives.
At one point, when Barack was too obsessed with his own path, his own needs, she said to him: "I never thought I'd have to raise a family alone." So he changed and became more involved at home. Michelle is indeed the chief of the Obamas: not just her daughters' mother but the person who makes sure the whole family is functioning.
Miranda Sawyer
"There is a strong possibility that Barack will pursue a political career, although it's unclear. There is a little tension with that. I think he's too much of a good guy for the kind of brutality, the scepticism. When you are involved in politics, your life is an open book and people can come in who don't necessarily have good intent. I'm pretty private"
On a life in politics, May 1996
"Just don't screw it up, buddy!"
To her husband just before a speech, June 2004
"We have this ritual in the morning. They come into my bed, and if Dad isn't there... because he's too snorey and stinky, they don't want to ever get into bed with him. But we cuddle up and talk about everything, from what is a period to the big topic of when we get a dog: what kind?"
On her daughters, September 2007
"America is just downright mean. We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day. Folks are just jammed up, and it's gotten worse over my lifetime. And, doggone, I'm young: 44!"
Primary stump speech, January 2008
"The realities are that as a black man, Barack can get shot going to the gas station"
On race, February 2009
"For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction"
At a primary campaign rally, February 2008
"I need to be prepared to do what the country needs me to do at the time. Whether that's baking cookies or serving as a wonderful hostess, that's my job. I will be staunchly invested. It is a joint project"
On doing her duty, May 2008
"It's fun to look pretty. I do a little bit of everything. I have some high-end stuff"
On a TV chat show, June 2008
"I never cut class. Sorry, I don't know if anybody here is cutting class. I never did. I loved getting As. I liked being smart. I loved being on time. I loved getting my work done. I thought being smart was cooler than anything in the world"
On her school days, April 2009
"When she was at Princeton, her brother called me and said: 'Mom, Michelle's here telling people they're not teaching French right'. I told him: 'Just pretend you don't know her'"
Michelle's mother, Marian Shields Robinson, March 2008
"I wouldn't say she ran roughshod over her friends, but she was sort of the natural leader"
Brother, Ctaig Robinson, March 2008
"There was a glimmer that danced across her round, dark eyes whenever I looked at her, the slightest hint of uncertainty, as if, deep inside, she knew how fragile things really were and that if she ever let go, even for a moment, all her plans might quickly unravel"
Barack on falling in love, October 2006
"I've had girlfriends call me and go, 'You're so lucky. If only I'd met her 15 years ago, I bet we'd be best friends'"
Cindy Moelis, March 2008
"She recognised she'd been privileged by affirmative action and she was very comfortable with that"
Harvard friend Verna Williams, February 2008
"A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab?"
Former Fox News anchor E D Hill, June 2008
"I don't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there's evidence, hard facts. If that's how she really feels - that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever - then that's legit. We'll track it down"
Fox News broadcaster Bill O'Reilly on claims Michelle was a "militant", February 2008
"I think she probably meant "more proud"
Laura Bush, on Michelle's statement that she was really proud of America for the first time, June 2008
"She said, "I do hugs" and hugged us. It was amazing"
Sabrina Chowdury, pupil at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson school, Islington, April 2009
"You don't go to Buckingham Palace in a sweater"
Oscar de la Renta, April 2009
"Now we've met, will you please keep in touch?"
The Queen, April 2009
"Michelle Obama is a full-blown, grown-up woman who looks and feels like a modern woman in the 21st century, allowing us to see the best of ourselves in her"
Oprah Winfrey, March 2009
"You know how some high school boys are. I was a screw-up, plain and simple! But Michelle knew what she wanted and after graduation she was off to Princeton. I couldn't stand in her way. I knew she would make a difference in the world"
David Upchurch escorted Michelle to their high school prom in 1982. They dated from when she was 16 until she graduated
Posted by Shona Lockhart, 6th May 2009
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