Afghanistan: Michelle Obama lifts up U.S. designers, elegantly around her shoulders --- First lady Michelle Obama eschewed Chanel, bypassed Dior and said no to the allure of Balenciaga. Instead, as she stood alongside her tuxedo-clad husband to greet French President François Hollande, she celebrated American style at Tuesday night’s state dinner in honor of fashion’s heartland. -- She selected a ballgown by the New York-based designer Carolina Herrera. The bodice of the dress, which was sewn by hand in Herrera’s New York atelier, was crafted of black lace — beaded, embroidered and appliqued. It formed a delicate scrim over a corset in a pale, dusty blue that the designer described as “liberty blue.” The elegant skirt, with its inverted pleats, flowed into a modest train. --- The lines of the state dinner gown, with its rather simple skirt and restrained — almost T-shirt-like — bodice, call to mind the quintessential ease of American sportswear. For all the dress’s floor-length, glittering formality, it is neither stuffy nor overwrought. It exudes a confident casualness that is the hallmark of American style. -- The American fashion industry has a historical inferiority complex when compared to its French counterpart. It is a low-grade paranoia, based on a history of operating in Paris’s shadow, one that does not exist in relation to designers of Italian or British descent. --- Even today, the self-doubting persists. American designers from Zac Posen to Ralph Rucci continue to go to Paris as a way of testing themselves. “I think with France, there is a special sensitivity,” said Hamish Bowles, international editor-at-large for Vogue. “France is still the fashion capital. It’s still a center for innovation and excellence and craftsmanship.” -- So it meant something that on a night when the White House set out to dazzle its French guests, Michelle Obama elevated American fashion, placing it alongside other defining aspects of our culture that were in the spotlight. Instead of an homage to French culinary might, the White House offered the best of American food. Mary J. Blige, who came out of hip-hop — the music born in America’s cities, created by its striving underclass — performed for the French dignitaries. And instead of giving a nod to French fashion, Obama turned to Seventh Avenue. --- Until Jacqueline Kennedy arrived in the White House in 1961, the question of American design vs. French was not such a fraught consideration in the East Wing. But Kennedy was part of a group of women — women of a certain class — who were accustomed to the precise fit, the clean lines and the aloof grandeur of French style. She was a product of her demographics, but she was also especially proud of her French heritage. Other women in her social circle mentored her on French style. And they helped to orchestrate the memorable wardrobe for Kennedy’s trip to France in 1962, during which she wowed guests at a dinner at Versailles with her ivory embroidered Hubert de Givenchy gown, recalled Bowles, who was curator of “Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2001. --- Nancy Reagan, whose affinity for fashion was well known, felt a similar pressure and relied on the deans of American design such as James Galanos, Bill Blass and Oscar de la Renta for her wardrobe.