You might be old enough to remember the popularity of wearing orange and yellow back in the 1970s. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t look any better today. I’m guessing Michelle’s cardi is none other than a J. Crew import.

Oprah gets it right is her purple dress. It goes great with her skin and who knew that big gals could wear shirtdresses with such style? This dress looks great on her! It seems like Oprah is always struggling with her weight (aren’t we all) and maybe she should try some cleansing diets. Beyonce’s Lemonade diet is for those that aren’t overburdened with toxins and that’s usually the case with younger people.

The older you get the harder it is to lose weight and it takes longer to clean the junk out. Unfortunately, that’s what it takes to really get the metabolism working again. Oprah probably has a healthy diet with a personal chef and all the expert talk show guests have supposedly the best advice. It’s unlikely that she’s loading up on twinkies because she knows better!

Maybe Oprah has some good ideas on how America can recovery from the economic crisis. According to this picture, she’s got Michelle’s ear.

Tracy Reese Dress

African American designers get props from Michelle wearing Tracy Reese on the cover of People magazine. Tracy’s southern sistahs might like a job sewing some of her beautiful designs but that work is performed in China or India.

This Tracy Reese Guipure Lace Kimono Dress in Dried Azalea retails for $395 at her boutique in NYC.

This dress is from American Apparel, made in Los Angeles and retails from their online store for $35.00. No, a cotton rib dress doesn’t compare stylewise to Guipure Lace but from a manufacturing standpoint it’s not much different. The person sewing the American Apparel dress makes $12.00 an hour and the corporation still makes a nice profit selling it at $35.00. Obviously, lace is more expensive so let’s say the Tracy Reese dress COST $70 to make which is highly unlikely and it sells for $395?? Whoa, that’s alot of profit, but for who?? At that kind of markup, we could afford to pay our employee more than 12 bucks even in factoring health care and maybe some other perks like child care that American Apparel offers.

A quick search on Ebay turns up a new-with-tags Tracy Reese Paper Bag Runway Dress offered at $86 with an original retail of $660. If it’s so easily devalued then was it really worth $660 to begin with? How many barrels of oil did it take to cross the ocean? These are questions we should be asking ourselves when we buy anything.