Vivienne Tam on dressing US first lady Jill Biden, what she wore for the inauguration, and meeting China’s first lady, Peng Liyuan
- Vivienne Tam dressed US first lady Jill Biden for two occasions in 2015, and the designer recalls it being ‘very exciting’ and Biden as ‘friendly and gracious’
- It was not Hong Kong-born Tam’s first brush with the White House – in 2012, Hillary Clinton invited the designer to attend a lunch in honour of Xi Jinping
Back in 2015, during the Obama administration, Guangzhou-born, New York-based designer Vivienne Tam dressed the United States’ new first lady, Jill Biden, for two different occasions.
The first was a State Department lunch honouring Chinese President Xi Jinping and hosted by then Vice-President Joe Biden and then Secretary of State John Kerry; the second was a state dinner at the White House to welcome Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan.
“At the end, she said, ‘Just choose the pieces that best represent the brand and Vivienne Tam.’ She really placed her trust in me, asking me to decide – and that was a fantastic feeling and experience to have.”
Tam still remembers the strict security detail that accompanied Biden. “The whole building was blocked, even the lift,” she says. “Secret Service agents covered the whole block.”
For the lunch, Biden wore a black-and-white long-sleeved knitted jacquard dress with chinoiserie motifs. For the dinner, she was clad in a sleeveless gown embellished with floral embroidery inspired by Beijing’s Forbidden City. She accessorised the gown with a beaded evening clutch with a panda motif, also designed by Tam.
The Forbidden City-inspired gown is a personal favourite of Tam. She had worn it herself at the Met Gala in New York in 2015, for the opening of the “China Through the Looking Glass” exhibition at the city’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Biden’s choice of a Chinese-American designer for both events was a very well executed diplomatic move. She and Tam never discussed the topic, but Tam believes that it was very thoughtful of her to choose a Chinese-American designer to meet China’s president. Tam recalls that at the lunch Biden made a point of introducing her to Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan and even told Peng: “You should wear Vivienne Tam.”
“When I get invited to an event like this, although it’s always really special and an honour, it is always hard to get used to,” says Tam. “I get a little bit star-struck and it is always little bit surreal. Really amazing.”
Tam worked again with Biden the following year, when she custom-designed a red dress in lace for another state dinner at the White House.
Her collaboration with Biden was not, however, the first time that Tam had been involved with the upper echelons of US politics. In 2012, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton invited Tam to attend another lunch in honour of Xi Jinping. Both Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, have worn Vivienne Tam clothes in the past.
“The colour looked very nice on her,” Tam says. “It was great that she decided to promote a new designer.”
