Elsewhere during the appearance, which aired in place of Michelle’s weekly IMO podcast, Michelle said she felt compelled to look the part after Barack was elected president in 2008, insisting her role required her to represent the nation.
“When I was First Lady of the United States, it wasn’t about what I needed to look like. I needed to show up in the way that the country needed me to show up, right? And that wasn’t a sacrifice. You know, that was just like, this is the job,” she stated.
“The job we are here to do is serve the nation, be a representative of this country, to serve it proudly – not to make my hair, my clothes, my shoes the story.”
Michelle told Palmer that she did realize “the power that I could have with that platform to lift up fashion in a very different way. So I was like, ‘All right, if everybody’s looking at my shoes, then I’m gonna wear a designer that could use the attention.'”