Man, Oh Man

A Look at How Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff Dresses

• Plus: Jane Goodall in Paris and SoCal

First Ladies have been fashion fodder since young Jacqueline Kennedy swirled about Washington in her chic couture. And over the last two decades or so—with the arrival of the “fashion critic” at daily newspapers in the 1990s—the what-she’s-wearing reportage has become PhD theses on how the First Lady’s looks sit in the big picture of Society, or, more weirdly, if there is a secret message, like code, in her wardrobe choices.

This deep-think analysis on what women in politics reached new heights this week when everyone—and it really does feel like every fashion pundit out there—weighed in on Kamala Harris’s clothing at the convention. My favorite was when various fashion commentators pointed out that her tan Chloe pantsuit was not officially “tan,” but “coconut brown,” which some believe is a self-deprecating inside joke on her now-famous “coconut” remarks. As if, in the lead-up to the convention, Madame Vice President had the wherewithal to say to her styling team: “Find me a ‘coconut brown’ suit!”

Vice President Kamala Harris in her Chloe “coconut brown” pantsuit.

But all this noise about what she wears has gotten me to thinking: Now that the balance of political power in the USA has finally flipped—we’ve had a female Speaker of the House, a female Vice President, and now that we have a female career politician as the presidential candidate of a major party (as opposed to a former First Lady who was already under that microscope because she had been First Lady)—will the wardrobe scrutiny switch over to her spouse?

So far, it has not.

To change that, I decided to call my favorite menswear critic, Derek Guy, aka The Menswear Guy, who I profiled in The Style Files in this spring, and who now has 1 million followers on X, to talk about the Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s sartorial choices. It isn’t pretty.