Original subtitles

Woman: Style is how you project yourself.

It's about coming into stores like this

and finding your favorite thing

and just putting it all together.

It's places you go to eat,

the people you hang out with and the magazines you read.

It's a lifestyle.

Woman: It's about creating something

that's your own and saying,

"Here I am. Look at me today."

Man: By the '90s and 2000s,

things had become increasingly less formal.

Woman: She shows you it's not about the dress.

It's about the woman that wears it.

It's become a lot more free-form.

Hello, lover.

Man: Style no longer came from New York or Hollywood.

No one is saying, "You must appear this particular way."

We are in the inclusivity era, and it's race,

it's age, it's gender, it's size.

American style is becoming very diverse.

Woman: Fashion is becoming much more accessible in every way.

Man: After the '80s excess,

you had a return to simplicity in the '90s.

The '90s, for a long time, seemed like was a period

that didn't seem to have any style

after the extremely visible styles of the '80s.

Gunn: We, as a nation, had been dictated to

by big brands and big names until the '90s.

It was very confusing for people

because we hadn't been in a position

to make many decisions other than are you mainstream

or are you nonconformist?

It was an American style crisis, and it was a crisis of identity.

Who are we?

Man: In the early '90s,

Bill Clinton, governor of Arkansas,

was running against George H.W. Bush for president.

Man: Some of the things that he did,

like playing the saxophone on "Arsenio Hall"

or going on talk shows was part of broadening his appeal

among segments of the population

that mainstream politicians had largely ignored in the past.

In contrast, Bush 41 was of a generation when presidents

were disconnected from popular culture.

You wouldn't imagine him appearing on any talk show,

so Clinton was able to make himself appear to be cool

and connected to the culture

in ways that his older opponents were not.

Man: We liked this guy.

He came across as somebody that was concerned about the hood.

There was a high hope

that he was the triumph of something new.

On this day,

the American people have voted to make a new beginning.

In politics, you want to talk about change,

and change means a new generation, new styles,

new fashions, new energy, and Bill Clinton exuded that.

Hello. This is Hillary Clinton.

I want to thank you for letting me speak with you

about solving our nation's health care crisis.

Boyd: Traditionally, First Ladies

were expected to be trophies.

They were not considered individuals

who would have their own opinions unique to themselves.

Hillary, though, was just as strong, just as articulate,

just as committed to causes as Bill.

I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies

and had teas, but what I decided to do

was to fulfill my profession

which I entered before my husband was in public life.

Man: America was not ready for a working First Lady.

America wanted to have a First Lady who baked cookies,

and when she said, "I'm not a First Lady who bakes cookies,"

America went crazy.

Man: She defied stereotypes,

and she faced a very sharp backlash.

I regret that anybody would have thought

I was putting any other woman down.

Woman need to have some sense of solidarity

to respect the choices that each of us make.

Man: Hillary Clinton felt as though her work

should speak for itself.

Woman: Hillary's style while she was First Lady

was distinctly unstylish.

She didn't have the attitude and interest

that somebody like a Jackie O. had.

Woman: She thought, "You know, I'm just going to wear

what I want to wear, that makes me happy,

and, like, whatever."

But there is no whatever

when you're a woman in the public eye.

Hillary Rodham Clinton has taken on a lot of heat as First Lady,

so a new poll posts a simple question:

What do Americans want in a First Lady?

Fifty-nine percent say that she should not

only dress appropriately but fashionably.

Woman: She was criticized for what her hair was doing,

if she had a headband, if she was wearing a skirt,

if she was wearing pants.

Man: I remember reading an article that stated

she was indecisive because of

how many times she changed her haircut.

You know, and it's like, "Come on.

Can she have a little fun?"

She drew a lot of fire that's really very sexist.

When women show that they are ambitious,

the culture takes issue with that.

Man: This is something that stuck with her

throughout her long political career in the public eye.

Woman: People gravitated towards Oprah

because she was a self-made person.

She gained her identity because of the force of her personality

and her vision,

and that spoke to American women.

There's one thread running through each show we do.

It is the message that you, you are not alone.

She allowed people to talk about their problems,

and we didn't really do that in America.

And she, herself, then shared things

that she had gone through that were similar,

so it was breaking down the walls.

Can I have a Kleenex to get the river

that's running under my armpits?

Man: And suddenly women were watching at home on their couch,

and they realized there were other people

who could relate to them.

Oprah's show tapped into some deep-seated

need for a spiritual guru who wasn't the Pope,

who wasn't an evangelical scold, who wasn't a misogynist.

There was none of those things.

It's a challenge!

Man: Women were incredibly influenced by the things

that she would talk about on her show.

-Hey! -She had "My Favorite Things,"

where she would talk about the things that she loved,

and she would often give away these products to her audience,

and in doing so, every time she would mention a product,

its value would massively rise in the marketplace,

and this started to become known as the Oprah Effect.

Man: She was really a champion for things

that she personally thought were great.

Books!

Woman: She was so relatable.

At the time, people on TV were perfect.

They had perfect TV helmet hair.

They had perfect wardrobes, perfect makeup,

and Oprah was perfectly imperfect.

Gunn: Oprah is a relatable person

in terms of her size, her shape,

and it means that if she looks good in something,

I'm probably going to look good in the same thing.

Man: The fact that she admitted her biggest problem

has been dealing with her weight speaks volumes.

Man: She was encouraging us to be our authentic selves,

and that opened the floodgates

of what was about to happen in America.

Woman: Now in the '90s, fashion has ushered in the supermodels

who can demand as much as $10,000 a show.

As they sometimes do five shows a day,

their weekly salaries can quickly climb to six figures.

The 1990s was the golden age of the supermodel.

That was the first time in fashion history

that there was a group of girls that everyone knew.

-Naomi. -Claudia.

-Cindy. -Christy Turlington.

Linda Evangelista.

They were all over the press.

They were all over TV, and they were making a lot of noise.

They were chased by paparazzi.

They were at all the biggest parties.

They were dating celebrities.

Sometimes they married and then divorced celebrities.

Woman: In the '80s, Sports Illustrated

was the first one to put my name on a cover,

and walking down the street, cab drivers would go,

"Yo, Christie! Hey."

You know?

And all of a sudden, I had a name.

They were known as personalities,

and they were almost like actresses,

but some of the times the personality seemed

to be really larger than life,

where Naomi Campbell was more famous

for throwing her cell phone at people than her fashion work.

They're in their early 20s, but yet they seem very womanly.

They wore those clothes.

They were not hangers.

They could do different looks and shoots,

and you would lose yourself in them.

Woman: They see something that the other people don't see,

and they bring it forward, and then you see it.

Woman: Supermodels really brought fashion

into every household.

Man: Generation X, they're the 14-to-29-year-olds

who, we are told, feel the best of times are long past,

the best jobs are out of reach

and the future is out of control.

Woman: The twenty-somethings now were shocked into reality

before they even got a chance to have the freedom

and the fun and the dreaming that other generations

had when they were in their 20s.

When "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was first broadcast,

you were like, "Oh, my God. What just happened?"

It had a shock value that was seismic.

Man: It was angsty,

drugs and booze and basements sound,

and it was really kind of shot through with a hopelessness,

and there was no expectation of a future

that involved money or position or achievement or anything.

That sense of economic marginalization, of loserdom

then broke onto the national stage because of Nirvana.

Man: The grunge movement was a direct response

from the excessive '80s.

There was this subculture that was developing

in the Pacific Northwest

which was brought along by music culture of the time,

and those people were just kind of,

like, they didn't give a .

They were antifashion,

and antifashion was about wearing a lumberjack shirt,

real ripped-up old jeans, never washing your clothes,

never combing your hair and wearing sneakers

that looked like they had been through hell and back.

Gunn: Grunge is an extension of the hippie movement.

It was the anticonformist fashion niche,

but it was also about fairly minimal clothes.

I mean, we have a T-shirt. We have a pair of jeans.

We have a ratty old holey sweater.

Man: People wore something they

didn't even have to think about.

It looked as though, in the case of Kurt Cobain,

he did his shopping at secondhand stores.

That was the beginning of vintage becoming popular

and then, in today's world, vintage becoming expensive.

It's about coming into stores like this

and finding your favorite thing

and just putting it all together.

Man: These guys weren't trying to create a fashion trend.

They had poured all their heart an soul into their music.

They didn't have money to go buy stuff.

They were thrifting, and eventually

because of the power of their music,

it transformed from what was not intended

to be a fashion movement to truly a worldwide sensation.

Woman: In the early '90s,

grunge was picked up by Marc Jacobs.

Man: Marc Jacobs is one of

the most well-known American designers,

and he was designing the women's collection at Perry Ellis,

and he decided to do a collection based on grunge.

He showed it the high fashion look,

and you had plaid shirts that suddenly were selling for $400

when you got it secondhand at the thrift store for $4.

Instead of flannel, the shirts were made out

of chiffon and silk made to look like flannel,

and it was very well thought out.

It was very expressive,

but the criticism was that the clothes looked inexpensive,

but they weren't, and that regular 30-,

40-year-old women would not wear it.

Woman: The rich were offended by it.

The kids who felt like their uniforms had been taken away

from them were offended by it,

and it got him fired from Perry Ellis,

but it made him famous.

What it did is it opened the door to Marc Jacobs

to start his own collection.

Woman: The appropriation of the clothing of the rebellion

is a standard approach to fashion now.

Woman: While police and politicians

and parents are all worried

to death about kids and drugs,

the fashion industry has been sending a very different message

to young people featuring what's called "heroin chic."

Man: Heroin was a big part of the grunge scene,

and in the commodification of grunge,

heroin came bundled with that,

and a certain kind of look --

gaunt and circles under the eyes and sallow but sexy and young.

Woman: Heroin chic initially came as a pendulum swing away

from glamour to another kind of youthful beauty.

What came before it was the supermodel era,

and then you get Kate Moss, and she's 16, and she's skinny,

and there were a lot of girls who liked that.

"I'm skinny. I'm not that glamorous model."

Man: All the models were getting really gaunt,

and thin was extremely in,

and these girls looked like they were drugged up,

and they very well might have been.

There was a lot of backlash to heroin chic.

When you put somebody passed out on a floor

with dark circles under their eyes,

that's sending a message to young people

that this is okay to do, that this is a glamorous drug,

and it's been that way for a number of years.

The truth of it is that there were people using drugs,

and there was a problem, and then people died.

Man: A young New York photographer

named David Sorrenti

experimented with the style and with heroin,

and 3 months ago he died of an overdose.

The glorification of heroin is not creative.

It's destructive. It's not beautiful.

It is ugly.

That became a wake-up call to a lot of people in fashion,

that perhaps this imagery is glamorizing

a lifestyle that's extremely dangerous.

Woman: Nevertheless, that look influenced

a lot of fashion trendsetters.

To this day, there's still

a little tinge of that heroin chic

in the modeling industry.

Woman: When "Sex and the City" burst on the screen,

it was fabulous.

Man: It was about this sexually aggressive woman,

and it was so culturally, like, shocking and great.

It really brought the whole dialogue

about being a woman to a certain place.

Carrie Bradshaw was a fashion icon in her own right.

She sort of bridged the gap between couture runways

and the everyday woman.

God, Carrie, I'm sorry.

I just can't imagine where your shoes went.

You know, Jennifer was wearing sandals.

Perhaps she took yours by mistake.

Well, actually, they weren't sandals.

They were Manolos.

Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo,

straight men know what those shoes are

because of "Sex and the City."

Hello, lover.

The clothing and the styling of the characters

on "Sex and the City" was so personality-driven.

Each of these women sort of communicated

through their clothing who they were,

and I think that really connects with this innate

feeling that we want what we wear to say

something about who we are in the world.

All the girls were glued to that show,

and all the girls were defining themselves.

"Are you a Samantha?"

That show had a lot of impact.

Just to watch Carrie Bradshaw's own fashion evolution

was inspiration enough.

The mixing of high and low where you have extravagant items

paired with the most commonplace items inspired people.

Woman: Fashion become more personal, because at the time,

everyone just wore a uniform.

You had your Gucci by Tom Ford uniform.

You had your Chanel uniform.

You were one type of girl, and that was it, you know?

But with Sarah Jessica Parker, she kind of said,

"Hey. It's okay to be you."

And that's what Pat Field brought to the small screen.

Woman: "Videofashion" spent today with Emmy Award-winning

costume designer Patricia Field during New York Fashion Week.

She scoured the shows for looks to transform the women

of "Sex and the City" into their characters.

Man: It's really all Pat Field.

I mean, she did everything, and she's a phenomenon herself.

Her father was a tailor, so she knows lines,

seams, draping, flow and structure.

Everything about the success of "Sex and the City"

was a wonderful surprise.

Sarah Jessica Parker was a natural in clothing:

graceful, enjoyed it, was intellectually into it.

So she and I had that creative relationship

which produced that whole thing.

She understood that you could wear pearls

with a wifebeater and a tutu or whatever.

If you take the classics that are real classics

and put them together in new ways,

you know, you've got a winning hand.

Woman: And there was still debate

about some of her most iconic ensembles,

on whether they work or don't work,

but that's some of it because some people think they do,

and some people think that they're outrageous,

and all the opinions are valid.

The most valuable thing that...

My takeaway was my communication with women.

What I heard over and over again was,

"Finally, someone made us look the way we are:

glamorous and happy."

It really made me feel good

because that is my attitude anyway.

I come from a happy place.

The current craze for reality television has created

what many see as a growing and deplorable dependence

on endangering or humiliating people

just for pure entertainment.

Man: It's a generational thing.

I mean, I think that this kind of TV is to TV

what heavy metal and gangster rap is to teen music.

It's a generational thing. It's a fad.

Reality TV really, really took off in the 2000s.

Man: All of a sudden, you could be just a regular person,

and you could be on TV.

Everyone started to think,

"My life is as interesting as that.

I could be the center of my own show."

Man: There were competition shows like "Survivor"

and "Big Brother."

I think of "The Simple Life,"

Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie

Woman: There's the home improvement shows,

where you can sit at home and say,

"I, too, can do this, and I can afford it."

There were the makeover shows

like "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."

"Queer Eye for the Straight Guy"

basically came around the same time

as the advent of the word "metrosexual,"

where it was this novel term

to imply that a straight man could,

oh, my God, be interested in grooming and fashion.

Before, it was kind of if you cared too much,

that might make you gay, and we're like,

"No, you can be a little gay."

And I think that show gave guys permission

to care about the way they looked.

It's going to be a little bit longer.

Woman: All of these shows not only inspire us as viewers

but get us up and motivated,

whether it's through style of fashion or style of your home.

That's what's so exciting.

It has democratized the playing field, democratized taste.

This is "Project Runway."

Let's go!

Hell yes, I'm the best.

You're either in, or you're out.

I'm in. They're out.

"Project Runway" is one of the granddaddy reality shows,

and when it first started, the question was,

"Oh, are people really going to watch people sew."

I want to ask all the designers to please onto the runway.

We've tallied your scores.

If I say you're name, please step forward.

Man: Before "Project Runway,"

people were disconnected from the idea of clothing.

They would just go to a store and buy something and put it on.

"Project Runway" showed the process of a garment

being thought of and produced and shown on a runway

and talked about and dissected.

Gunn: It was a lens into the fashion industry

that, quite frankly, was very polarizing

when the show first began to air.

There were a lot of people in the fashion industry

who said, "We like the fact

that there's this veil and mystery and intrigue

and that the work of fashion designers is so rarefied."

"Project Runway" ripped the veil off.

Woman: It was the first show that made you feel like

a front-row VIP.

You're watching the runway show,

and you're like,

"That designer crushed it. That designed choked."

Gunn: The summary of the show's impact

was made by Conan O'Brien,

who said to me, "This program has given me

a vocabulary to talk about clothes."

And I thought, "How interesting, and how unexpected,

but it makes sense."

Christian...

you are the winner of "Project Runway."

The fashion industry is very difficult to break into,

but those designers who were able to use the platform

were able to kind of get into the public sphere.

Parsons told us that their applications

went up nearly 70 percent once "Project Runway" started airing.

I mean, that's a big deal, like, people considering,

"Oh, that could be my life path."

And then we see people come to the auditions and say,

"Oh, I watched 'Project Runway' when I was a kid,

and that's what made me decide to be a designer,"

but it's pretty impactful

to have had that influence on an entire generation.

Ever thought about what you were doing when you were 15?

Chances are you weren't in the front row

at a Paris runway show, air-kissing famous designers,

but that's the life, part of the life we should say,

of a young blogger who's turning some very fashionable heads.

Woman: Social media and bloggers broke the world wide open.

Woman: It's a fascinating phenomenon

because you realized that any individual anywhere in the world

can suddenly have an audience from around the world.

Man: They enabled radically new possibilities

for self-expression and self-experimentation.

It's become possible for people who have really distinct style

and taste to ascend the ranks.

There is so many talented people in the country,

and the social media and the Internet

is really leveling the playing field in all spaces.

Woman: So you could be a little girl like Tavi

who was obsessed with fashion

and starts putting herself up online

and becomes a real fashion influencer

and is flown all over the world

and seating in the front row at fashion shows.

She had immense impact.

Everyone wants to know what young people care about.

Woman: People don't really trust advertisements.

They know you're trying to sell them something,

but if somebody who's not a member of a company says,

"This bag is so fabulous,"

sales of that bag are going to take off.

Woman: Tina Craig, also known as the Bag Snob,

is one of the most influential style bloggers.

With her posts, she can transform the fortunes

of an entire business.

Oscar de la Renta said that their bag sales doubled

when the Bag Snob started posting about them.

Oscar de la Renta reached out to us

and brought us in prior to the fashion show,

and at the time it was unheard of.

It was Cathy Horyn and Anna Wintour,

the only two that had access to Oscar's collection

before the show, and had us look at the bags.

A lot of people took notice,

some not as positive in the editorial world.

"Why did they get access?"

Bloggers have changed the style landscape

in that they've kind of made the pie bigger.

If an event is happening, the commentary is ubiquitous

and so detailed, and then, poof.

It's gone.

Everything happens at the speed of light.

Woman: Gucci is suing Forever 21

for trademark infringement.

Gucci claims the retailer is copying

its iconic green-red-green and blue-red-blue stripes.

Man: Fast fashion is a series of chain retailers

who basically are able to look at the runways

and make garments really quickly and put them into a see-now,

buy-now kind of a retail environment.

The one thing about fast fashion

that is challenging in the fashion world

is a version of it is out there

with some of the fast fashion companies

before you even put your product out there.

Woman: So now you have stores

like H&M, ZARA, Topshop

that they're just a constant cycle of trends.

Everyone has access to the Internet to watch a show.

It's made us so impatient.

If you're going to offer the show,

you're going to let everyone see it.

You know, they should be able to have it.

So fast fashion became very popular

because we all crave that instant gratification.

Woman: I heard this story.

One of these big fast fashion companies have ships

that are literally factories,

and they have people sitting on those ships

as they're crossing the oceans, sewing, so that by the time

that the ship reaches its destination, it's together.

I never checked it, to be honest,

but it sounds very plausible.

Fast fashion is very much a phenomenon of globalization.

Now it's not about everything being manufactured in one place

in New York City or in the United States.

There are these factories all over the world

that produce things very quickly at a very fast turnover

and very cheaply.

Fast fashion is also about, when we say fast,

it's not going to last in your wardrobe very long.

So it's going to be fast on you and fast off you.

What has happened is that has turned into,

"Everyone should get new clothes all the time."

And it's sort of devalued the idea

that you would save your money for,

you know, a really beautifully made garment

and that then you would keep it, you know,

that it was not a disposable garment,

and that concept has kind of disappeared.

And CNN can now project that Barack Obama, 47 years old,

will become the President Elect of the United States.

Man: When Barack Obama won,

we were pinching ourselves with glee

that America could be so brazen and open-minded.

When he showed up in Grant Park, the crowds came,

and he gave this extraordinary speech.

There was a feeling that we're going to be okay.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts

that America is a place where all things are possible,

tonight is your answer.

Man: He became a president of great integrity.

The public didn't turn on him, and a First Lady that's beloved.

Woman: It's very symbolic, at this particular moment,

we're having this global economic meltdown

that the First Lady of the United States

is wearing J. Crew to Number 10 Downing Street.

Woman: It was interesting to watch Michelle Obama use clothes

unlike anyone before her.

Her approach to it was entirely,

you know, thought out, strategic, conscientious,

tied to her husband's, you know, platforms.

It was the most democratic look of a First Lady

that felt stylish but reached a lot of people that said,

"I can be Michelle Obama."

Woman: Certainly with Michelle Obama,

you can't get away from the American history of racism,

from the stereotypes that,

you know, that exist around how people should look.

Man: Something as insignificant as Michelle Obama

wearing something that didn't have sleeves

was thought to be scandalous.

It's really not scandalous at all.

However, a lot of people were reacting to the fact

that they had never seen a black woman in this position before,

and anything that sort of further exposed her blackness

made some people uncomfortable.

After that, she wore floral dresses with cap sleeves,

and that was a conscious decision to say,

like, "I'm not going to be a scary person.

I'm going to, like, dress like Doris Day."

You know, then it became part of how she looked.

She made them her own.

Woman: Michelle Obama is so in vogue,

she's on the cover of Vogue.

Man: Michelle Obama, I think, has great style,

and she was never afraid to wear the high or the low.

She just wanted to come in front of the public and look good,

and I think she did a great job of it.

Woman: Michelle Obama is an incredibly important role model.

She is strong.

She's beautiful.

She is inclusive.

She's generous.

Man: She also really honored the American fashion designer.

She wore tons of up-and-coming designers,

and that was amazing because otherwise

they would not have been seen.

By the time they left the White House,

she had worn 90 percent of the designers

on the New York Fashion Week schedule.

No one can wear that many different designers

without thinking, "Okay.

I'm going to make sure that I promote everybody."

She also focused very much on designers

who were kind of hyphenates.

You know, Cuban-Americans, Japanese-Americans,

Chinese-Americans,

you know, which was very much about inclusivity

and outreach and promotion of small businesses.

Woman: They've always been thin, but some of the models

on the catwalk these days are not just skinny.

They're downright skeletal.

Woman: There have always been ideals of bodies,

but as standards get higher,

they get sort of more and more narrow and repressive.

Man: The beauty ideal is usually something

that's difficult to obtain.

When people worked in the fields and food was scarce,

the beauty ideal was porcelain-white skin

and some meat on your bones,

and now as food is incredibly plentiful

and most people work indoors,

thin and tan is the beauty ideal.

If you only looked at runway shows,

you would think these women are from another planet.

They're not even remotely relatable

because they are a rarefied size and shape.

Woman: You can have someone who looks,

by anybody's standards,

really young and beautiful, and yet the photo of them

or the video of them is still touched up.

People are now really pushing back against that,

and they're saying, "Maybe you should also be

trying to make clothes that actually fit

and are flattering to all of the sizes that we are

as opposed to the sizes that you would like us to be."

Gunn: There are more than 80 million women in this nation

who are larger than a size 12,

and they want to look as great as they can look,

and they should.

Woman: Move over, waifs.

some real women are sharing the spotlight,

and the industry says that's a real plus.

Woman: A lot of the designers

who are using size-inclusive models

in their runway shows get it.

They get that their customers are that size

and want to see themselves reflected

in the runways, on the campaigns.

Couric: In an effort to reach real women,

companies are turning to real women, like Dove,

whose latest well-publicized ad blitz features models

plucked from all walks of life.

Man: Dove has done an ongoing campaign

where they've used real women:

curvy, older, younger, multiracial.

When you look at this country, you know, 20 years from now,

white people are going to be in the minority,

so all of these people need to be embraced.

We've had the body era.

We had the waif era,

and now here we are in the inclusivity era,

and it's race. It's age.

It's gender. It's size.

This has basically taken form in the natural hair movement,

where black women were complaining

that they were not represented in media.

It's a question of, you know, if you're a little curvy,

own your curves, and they become your assets.

This comes in the form of the body-positivity movement,

and then also, this has taken its own new way of,

I think, too, into transgender visibility more recently.

Man: Broadening the scope, broadening the frame

allows for more different types of beauty,

but it also makes us think about power and status

in different ways.

Man: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg,

who is getting just as much attention for his sense of style

as he is for his company's IPO.

Man: In America, it often matters who wears something

and how they wear it.

Take Silicon Valley, right?

You look at the men in Silicon Valley:

super casual, the hoodie, Converse, whatever.

Man: These people could wear anything that want

because they are so wealthy

they don't have to put on any airs, etcetera.

A guy like Mark Zuckerberg indicates

that he's not what you've come to expect

because he often wore a hoodie.

It was a way for him to say,

"The culture that I represent is younger, less formal,

but ultimately very effective."

In contrast, if you take a kid like Trayvon Martin,

stylistically, he wore his hoodie

with the hood over his head,

and, of course, when Trayvon Martin was killed,

he was identified as a thug.

Race is the prevailing factor.

A white guy wears a hoodie and gets to be a billionaire.

A black guy wears a hoodie and ends up in the cemetery.

Demographic, race and class distinctions

have always been linked.

Woman: Demonstrators changing Eric Garner's last words,

"I can't breathe."

Woman: The NBA's most prominent player,

LeBron James, in the warm-up between the Cleveland Cavaliers

and the Brooklyn Nets put on a black T-shirt.

Man: The power of style is to assert individuality.

So by conveying a stance,

a disposition, through style,

that is a political act.

Man: The major thing about style is you can say so much

without ever opening your mouth.

Woman: Ladies and gentlemen, this is the first time

we've seen the First Lady in 26 days.

Here she is sitting next to her husband, the President.

Woman: Melania Trump has been very, very silent,

does not appear very much and hence, when she does appear,

what she wears gets a huge amount of attention

because it seems to be sending some sort of coded message

to her husband, to someone else.

It's never entirely clear, but, you know,

when they were on the campaign trail

and the notorious "Access Hollywood" tape leaked

and we have Pussygate,

she then arrives at her next public appearance

in a fuchsia Gucci pussy bow blouse,

and everyone thought, "Oh, my God. It's great.

She's, like, she's sending coded messages to her husband

about how she's mad at him."

During an announced visit to a detention facility

for migrant children in McAllen, Texas,

earlier today, the First Lady's office

is pushing back against reporters

who asked about the First Lady's jacket of choice

as she boarded Air Force One headed for Texas today.

The jacket said, on the back, "I really don't care. Do U?"

Woman: There's no way she didn't know that however many steps

that was, from car to plane,

that people were going to be taking pictures.

And then her spokesperson said, "Oh, well,

there's no hidden message in that.

It's just a jacket."

You know, everyone thought, "No.

It's not hidden. It was right there."

Like, you couldn't miss it.

So then the question becomes who is it for?

And, you know, there's still a huge amount of debate

about that, but, you know, I don't think there's any doubt

she was sending a message to someone.

We're living in interesting times right now

in terms of how we utilize fashion to address

the way we're feeling about what's happening in the world.

Style gives you a voice.

It's freedom.

Woman: Now, there's no such thing as one American style,

and that's what's really wonderful.

It's porous, and it's coming from lots of different places,

and the diversity that we have in this country

is just life-affirming.

There is no fashion designer who dictates what we wear anymore.

Christian Dior dictated what women wore in the '50s,

Balenciaga in the '60s.

Calvin Klein and Ralph and Donna decided in the '80s.

Now what's embraced is being yourself.

You can be who you are and have your own style,

have your own look,

and if it works for you, then it's great.

If you feel like you look great, then you look great.

The artist is important again,

like the street artist, the normal person,

and that's healthy because young people

need to experience expressing themselves.

I think American style, like our country,

is constantly changing.

Where we are as a culture is divided,

but maybe we'll be open to finding common ground.

Man: People are really embracing the opportunity

to tell their story visually.

People wake up and want to feel this sense of freeness

from the clothes they put on their backs.

The new American identity is all around us.

Just go into any city in the United States

and feel the ethnic diversity and multiculturalism.

The one thing that's certain is, every second,

the world is changing.

It gets exhausting when the world spins this quickly.

We've got to find ways not to lose our own decency.

Man: It's a new road.

It's the best time ever for American style.