Perspectives, a blog of ideas from The Johns Hopkins University

Avoiding fashion faux pas: Dressing the president for his inauguration

Posted on 11. Jan, 2009 by Tracey Reeves in Uncategorized

Barack Obama, who is known for his tailored dark two-button suits, is not likely to make a fuss about his Inauguration Day wardrobe. Some presidents have.

Milton S. Eisenhower wrote his brother, Dwight D. Eisenhower, on Dec. 27, 1952. Among other advice, he called it “a mistake” for Ike to disregard tradition and wear anything other than a high silk hat and cutaway coat at his presidential inauguration the following month.

Milton, who would become president of The Johns Hopkins University in 1956, told Ike that Americans “like what few formal traditions they have” and said, “The breaking of a tradition is news. . . . It places you in the position of attaching too much importance to a small thing.”

President Eisenhower and the First Lady during the Inaugural Parade (Photo by Frank Scherschel//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, includes this response from the president-elect to his younger brother:

“With respect to your paragraph three, I do not see how you can label a cutaway and a silk hat as ‘traditional.’ If that is the case, why should we not be wearing three-corner hats and knee britches?

“Man’s dress has continued to change down the ages, and in modern times has tended more and more toward the utilitarian. I do see certain advantages in a rough uniformity for formal occasions, and so I think that striped trousers with either an Oxford-gray cutaway or an Oxford-gray short coat would be perfectly satisfactory. But I think that to make the modern automobile and the silk hat meet in any kind of a compromise that takes convenience and comfort into consideration, is a complete impossibility.

“So far as the outgoing President is concerned, he is entitled, of course, to wear whatever he pleases, and will, of course, do so. On the other hand, I have not had a single incoming Cabinet officer or any of the Senators or members of the Congress in Washington, disagree with the proposal, even by a lifted eyebrow, for simplifying man’s formal dress.

“So to paraphrase old Patrick himself, ‘I know not what others may do, but as for me, free me of the silk hat – or else!’

“In spite of all the above, if you want to continue the argument, give me a ring when you get this note. … Love to Helen – and a Happy New Year to you and the entire family!”

Milton was right that his older brother’s sartorial decision would make news. The New York Times published a Jan. 15, 1953, story by James Reston, headlined, “Eisenhower Lowers Boom on Top Hat, Elects a Homburg.” He wore a club coat with his homburg hat.

Source: Pages 1,468-1,470, The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XIII: NATO and the Campaign of 1952, edited by Louis Galambos (Johns Hopkins University professor of history); The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.