Something tells me that Michelle Obama is going to be a regular in this column in the coming years. And having held off for an entire week, it's time that I initiated her.

First up, that victory rally appearance. Not the dress itself, which was a brave, bold and figure-accentuating choice - even if the remarkable exploding-bomb pattern on it made her look as though she'd got caught up in a landslide down Mount Vesuvius. But while the nuclear print had its compelling moments, particularly when it strobed on YouTube, the matching family outfits seemed to breach certain taste issues. Small female siblings just about get away with co-ordinated dresses, but statuesque lawyers are asking for trouble going

down this route. Many a mother-daughter relationship, forged in PR heaven, has crashed on the hellish rocks of lamb dressed as mutton (the Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice before they wised up and stopped dressing like Fergie every time the threesome hit the town) or mutton dressed as embryo (Goldie Hawn pretending to be Kate Hudson's sister, rather than her mother).

But let us resist all snarkiness for once, because it transpires that the Obama family's black-and-red theme reflects Africa's mourning colours - in which case they were paying their respects to Barack's recently departed grandmother, in which case snide remarks about Anna Wintour sending them a stiff letter on the perils of matchy-matchy are out of order. Oddly, little has been made of this fact.

Which goes to show two things: the style police don't like eating humble pie, and rules are made for breaking. Even in your forties.

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