GQ's Glenn O'Brien, otherwise known as "The Style Guy," considers himself a tuxedo traditionalist.
"It's one of the few areas in which I'm a purist," he told Yeas & Nays, while on a recent trip to Washington. O'Brien assessed what President Obama wore to inauguration No. 1 in 2009, with hopes that the POTUS will up the ante this time around. "I don't want to get in trouble, but I think if the president is going to wear a tuxedo again he should wear a black tie instead of a white tie or else he should go all the way and wear tails like they used to, like Kennedy did," O'Brien explained. In 2009, the president sported a white bow tie with a tuxedo. "It was just a sort of mixing metaphors -- a tuxedo is black tie, tails are white tie," he said, adding. "Michelle looked good though."
O'Brien has been writing for some time about the way politicians look. "Being well-dressed doesn't help [politicians]," he noted, pointing to the short-lived presidential campaign of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. "Huntsman is really well-dressed, didn't help him at all," O'Brien said. "Somebody like John Kerry, I thought he dressed a little too much like a CEO of a big corporation, his ties looked too expensive," O'Brien said of the former presidential candidate and U.S. senator (who is Obama's pick for the new secretary of state). As for former GOP candidate Mitt Romney, O'Brien said he did "alright." "Except when he went casual he looked like he had been worked on by a stylist, which I guess he was, because I guess his wife styled him. I think it was the first time he had jeans."
O'Brien also discussed how D.C.'s style has evolved since he spent his college days living in the city. "I think maybe it's not as preppy as it used to be," the Georgetown grad said. "I'm preppy tolerant, but I don't know, it's kind of a cult almost, those guys get really serious about it. Dressing is not that serious, it's more fun."
