Inaugural speech in full | Frosty outlook ahead | First Lady passes fashion test | Order of the day | People of Selma | Things to come | No excuse for prejudice | A day out with Mum and Dad | A slave's journey | Musical inspiration | A brave new world | Elizabeth Alexander: poem | Derek Walcott: poem

The 44th President of the United States may have had a tough speech to deliver, but as statements of conciliation go, of humility and of confidence, it was a cake-walk compared with the task facing his wife. Frankly, could there be a tougher decision than choosing the First Lady’s inauguration outfit?

Rhetorical question. That dress had more riding on it than any other dress in history. A time of crisis, of unemployment, territorial wars . . . these are dark days for the American fashion industry as department stores such as Saks and Lord & Taylor – great symbols of the nation’s prosperity – announce layoffs and New York Fashion Week does battle with Paris, London and Milan for a greater slice of the catwalk schedule.

Mrs O’s outfit had somehow to resolve all these issues instantly and silently signal the kind of First Lady she intends to be, because as fashion historians have been writing for months, that’s what inauguration dresses do. On this evidence Mrs O is going to be one forward-going First Lady, unlike the more retiring Laura Bush. That’s a lot for one outfit to achieve. And that’s before we get to the real purpose of every dress – to make the woman wearing it look seven pounds lighter and several years younger.

Michelle Obama's dress: a yellow inauguration outfit

The soon-to-be First Lady chose matching pale gold dress and coat for the ceremony with her husband

Related Links

• IN FULL: the inaugural speech

• Promised land for children of Bloody Sunday

• A wedding between president and people

Thus we come to see that Jackie Kennedy, the last truly glamorous female in the White House, had it easy in comparison with Mrs Obama. No blogs back then, several billion fewer televisions and only frumpy old Mamie Eisenhower as a predecessor.

So did yesterday’s outfit, designed by the Cuban-American Isabel Toledo (a favourite with the new First Lady) and maybe destined one day to be scrutinised by the sober eye of history in the Smithsonian, achieve the sartorial equivalent of a soaring Churchillian oration, or was it more of a Bushian grammatical pile-up? Also, how did she get round that thorny problem of which It Bag to carry, now that It Bags are officially Past-It bags?

First, the dress. On the plus side, that colour was a triumph. Colour, as our very own Mother of all First Ladies, the Queen, has irrefutably demonstrated, is terribly important for prominent women. So colour was the only sensible option given how much this dress had to compete with – from Laura Bush’s sombre elegance and Aretha Franklin’s insane millinery to Malia and Sasha’s adorable cobalt and salmon-pink coats (sensibly bought off the peg from J. Crew, the wholesome, mid-priced American chain, and unlike at the victory rally in Chicago mercifully not colour coordinated with their parents’ outfits).

But brights are a minefield. Woe betide the First Lady who wears something as brash as poor, little, someone-please-feed-her Nancy Reagan’s scarlet coat in 1981 (not that anyone told Jill Biden, but perhaps the rules are different for Second Ladies). Sapphire blue would have been too like Hillary’s not entirely successful choice in 1993. Pastels would have been a cop-out; dark colours wouldn’t have been visible from the back (especially since in this case, the back was several miles away); black is just rude . . . so all in all that golden yellow was a good idea: optimistic, idiosyncratic (only a woman of colour could get away with this shade) and very this season (despite being a total no-go area for women of pastiness).

And how daring, in these sober, cost-conscious days, to opt for not one but two cocktail fabrics – Swiss wool guipure lace and chiffon, neither of which comes cheap – and to stick with the fancy, diamante-embellished neckline, especially since she underplayed it with some olive gloves from J. Crew. Apparently not even Isabel Toledo knew for sure that hers was The Dress, so there was no question of the design being altered. “We had no idea,” said a delighted Toledo, watching her handiwork on televison yesterday. “We hoped she would wear something . . . it’s just another shock. But a great shock.”

I liked it, and thought that she carried it off brilliantly. It contrasted with her husband’s impeccably sober, slim-fitting suit and red tie and marked a definite change in tone from Laura Bush’s impeccably discreet grey suit. As for the shape – fitted sheath dress with matching coat – it might be classic Jackie Kennedy dressing but in the past year Michelle Obama has made it her own: it suits her toned, statuesque physique and it’s more streamlined and youthful than a suit.

But oh dear, what about the cut? As one blogger on the Huffington Post sweetly put it, is the White House shortly to witness the patter of tiny feet?

Assuming that Mrs Obama isn’t pregnant, this outfit, so good in many ways (and lined in silk for warmth), broke the cardinal rule of all clothes. Perhaps it was the lining. Possibly the tailoring just wasn’t up to the job. Whatever – not only did it not make her look slimmer, it somehow made her look fatter, in the photographs at least.

And yet . . . in the same way that fluffing the swearing-in bit makes Barack Obama even more appealing at this moment, perhaps looking a touch preggers, slightly less than perfectly toned and generally more like the rest of us, was the ultimate masterstroke.

Finally to that It Bag versus nonIt Bag dilemma, and that brilliant solution that augurs so well for her decision making. She carried the Bible.

Times Recommends

• Oprah Winfrey says goodbye to her talk show
• Focus on the big issues, not the bananas
• Václav Havel — symbol of national liberation