The youth, glamour and dashing political style of Senator Barack Obama has evoked many comparisons with President John F Kennedy, but the most Kennedyesque member of the Obama family may be his wife Michelle.

New York style watchers have identified striking similarities between Michelle Obama’s campaign wardrobe and the trend-setting fashions adopted by Jacqueline Kennedy who, after her subsequent marriage to Aristotle Onassis, became known as Jackie O.

Obama’s taste for 1960s-inspired classic chic has earned her the nickname Michelle O. Fashion editors and bloggers have been poring over pictures of the African-American senator’s wife and comparing them with Kennedy at the height of her Camelot glamour.

Several examples have been uncovered of near-identical outfits, notably a blue sleeveless dress that Obama wore with chunky pearls when she appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine earlier this year. Kennedy was photographed in a similar ensemble 40 years ago. Obama, 44, has also been seen in a tailored light yellow suit that appears uncannily similar to one worn by Kennedy when travelling with JFK. At 5ft 11in, Michelle O is taller and heavier than Jackie O, but appears to share her taste for simple, stylish designerwear.

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Obama’s style has earned her both praise and ridicule as her husband attracts intensifying scrutiny in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Style experts have noted that there are worse faux pas in the fashion world than modelling yourself on one of America’s most elegant icons.

Obama has a “Jackie kind of sensibility”, said Marcia Froelke Coburn of Chicago magazine. Last year she was named in a best-dressed list in Vanity Fair magazine, while Ebony magazine, aimed at black readers, nominated the Obamas as “the hottest couple in America”.

Right-wing bloggers have been less impressed. “She can’t channel Jackie O’s class . . . so why not wear her pillbox hat?” sniped one contributor to a fashion blog.

Obama is scarcely a dim-witted clothes horse. She studied sociology at Princeton University and went on to Harvard for a law degree. She attracted controversy when it was revealed that after her husband was elected a US senator in 2004, her salary as a Chicago hospital administrator shot up. Soon afterwards the Chicago media reported that someone might have stolen a mink coat she wore to a party.

She shrugged off complaints that she was being overpaid because of her husband’s success and has since become an eye-catching fixture at the senator’s side. Campaign aides have frequently shuddered at her tendency to speak out frankly – notably when she revealed that her husband sometimes wakes up with bad breath and body odour – and questions have also been raised about whether she is more left-wing than her husband.

Yet her aides insist there is nothing contrived or sinister about her wardrobe. “It is not a disguise,” said one Obama staffer. “It is who she is.”

Nor has her Camelot style hurt her husband’s standing with the Kennedy family. Most of them, including Caroline Kennedy, Jackie’s daughter, are backing Obama.

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