“It was cool,” says the 28-year-old viral TikToker and Fashion Institute of Technology graduate Joe Ando, on seeing his creation live on TV at the Democratic National Convention last week. “I wish I had a better word to describe it than cool.”
It was the dress of the night — a pale blue silk off-the-shoulder bodice and a hand-ruched tulle midi skirt. Its wearer, of course, was Ella Emhoff, Vice President Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter and potential next first daughter of the US.
“My brain is always under the assumption it’s not that big of a deal,” Ando told CNN via Zoom from his home in Brooklyn, New York.
“She needs a dress and she wears it, and people will watch this event but it won’t really be about what she’s wearing. But this was so public.”
The dress was deemed “White House-worthy” by streetwear and fashion blog Highsnobiety, while Vogue mused whether it solidified Emhoff as one of “America’s next fashion ambassadors.”
The 25-year-old’s gown seemed to embody a new era of power dressing — one where women don’t need to dress masculine in order to look and feel strong. “I wanted her to stick out, but in a way that was still very elegant and distinguished, and not obnoxious,” said Ando, who said the dress took between 70 and 90 hours to make.
“We wanted it to feel like an elegant tea party… a modern princess moment.”
But Ando didn’t see the final look until it was broadcast live on TV, since his and Emhoff’s schedules aligned for just one midnight fitting before her morning flight to Chicago. “She did the fitting with us at midnight, then there were like four hours worth of edits that had to be made,” he said.
“I went back to my studio, got it to her at 7 a.m. and then I only got to really see if those edits worked when she walked on stage.”
Outfits by independent designers can sometimes be found on political campaign trails, for those keen-eyed enough to spot them.
Eschewing the traditional names of Ralph Lauren, Carolina Herrera and Oscar de la Renta, smaller brands can help those in the limelight to communicate nuanced messaging by supporting emerging talent.
At the 2021 inauguration of President Joe Biden, Harris arrived in a Pyer Moss camel coat by Kerby Jean-Raymond — a young Black designer rewriting social narratives around race.
First Lady Dr. Jill Biden regularly made a point of wearing smaller, homegrown New York-based designers such as Markarian and Adam Lippes during a time when the industry was recovering from the fallout of COVID-19.
Stay tuned for the latest news on our radio stations
