Presidential scandals just hit different in 2014 — we called this one “The Audacity of Taupe.” Then-President Barack Obama was feted as a cool guy with surprisingly good style for a world leader; first lady Michelle Obama was a fashion icon in her own right, and the young family in the White House injected a Camelot-like vibrancy to the notoriously dowdy Washington, D.C., scene.
Yet when the president emerged on Aug. 28 to discuss foreign policy, the headlines slipped past the possibility of military action in Syria or tensions between Russia and Ukraine. Obama wore “a beige-colored jacket and a gray, striped tie,” as PolitiFact put it. “Yes we tan!” some wags joked on social media; “Taupe and Change” quipped others. Other commentators dissed the decision to wear a military-adjacent color, given the topic of the news conference; one Republican Congressman called it “unpresidential.” Presidents of both parties going back decades have worn tan suits, including Ronald Reagan and Dwight D. Eisenhower, with no controversy. The outrage over the fashion choice, fueled by social media and cable news, was viewed as a double standard and an example of underlying racial bias in determining what is deemed professional or not.
The infamous tan suit became a punchline for years to come, even as some Democratic politicians came to embrace the look, as then-Vice President Kamala Harris did during her own nominating convention to the presidency in 2024. The suit itself is not at the Obama Presidential Center, per chief corporate affairs officer Michael Strautmanis, but during the opening ceremony on Thursday, multiple guests and celebrities paid tribute to the look.
As for Obama himself, his own verdict on the fit?
“Listen, I own that tan suit proudly, brother!” he recently told comedian Stephen Colbert (who is sporting beige himself at the ceremony).
Here are our favorite tan suits among the crowd at the Obama Presidential Center opening ceremonies.
