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I’ve been watching the Inaugural Day festivities every year since Camelot. Sometimes I was been rooting for the man of the hour, sometimes just hoping things would go well under him. Reagan seemed so jaunty and familiar; it made me believe all would be well under his rule. (Pity the air traffic controllers who he fired! Pity those early victims of AIDS! Little did they sense what was coming – or in the second case wasn’t coming (attention. Help. Federal dollars.)
I felt the same with George Bush the younger who even now seems to me not to have a mendacious bone in his body – though I did wonder why Dick Cheney wouldn’t sing along to the national anthem. ‘What’s the deal with this guy?’ I remember wondering, long before the man’s ways and beliefs became familiar to us all.
I do I love watching it all. And like millions of us, I just love seeing the gowns.
The gown of Barbara Bush’s alone, worn by Bush Senior’s first lady, a lavish velvet edifice that is so ’80s’ you expect Molly Ringwald to open a little door in the skirt area and step out of it! That’s it up top. And how about Mary Todd Lincoln’s, immediately below? What I wouldn’t give to have that in our attic closet with 30 years of clothing and dress-up accessories!
These deep rich blues seem like a popular color for January when the world is gone to shades of white and pigeon-grey. Hillary never looked lovelier in hers, from ’93.
But how gorgeous are the pales ones too. Like Lady Bird Johnson’s
And Rosalyyn Carter’s, speaking of Camelot. I had a bathrobe in the ’70s that looked just like this – or wait, maybe it was my wedding gown – but how cool is it that this was the SECOND time she wore this dress. Those Carters! Way ahead of the rest of us!
Of course our current First Lady had one a real stunner four years ago, a dress that only a woman so obviously lean and toned could get away with wearing :
I can’t wait to see what she has on tonight!
And now for some Inauguration Day trivia, who is this First Lady, who wore birthday-cake pink for her gown? Way to go with that hunky date too!
